Killer was Erdogan’s bodyguard
Officer who shot envoy was part of president’s security
ISTANBUL // The young Turkish policeman who assassinated Russia’s ambassador to Ankara had provided security for president Recep Tayyip Erdogan eight times since the failed coup on July 15.
Mevlut Mert Altintas, 22, had been on bodyguard duty at eight events attended by the Turkish president. He was a member of the Ankara anti-riot police squad for two and a half years. When he was guarding the president, he was part of a second wave of Mr Erdogan’s security detail, after the personal bodyguard team.
Altintas used his police ID card to get into the exhibition centre in Ankara on Monday evening where he shot Russian ambassador Andrei Karlov nine times before he himself was shot dead by the police.
The revelations in the Turkish daily Hurriyet about how Altintas regularly worked in close proximity to Mr Erdogan call into question Turkey’s vetting procedures. The paper’s well- connected journalist, Abdulkadir Selvi, said Altintas had called in sick on the day of the coup attempt. Turkish foreign minister Mevlut Cavusoglu told the US secretary of state John Kerry that Turkey believed the cleric Fethullah Gulen was behind the assassination and are investigating possible links between Altintas and Gulenism. Altintas had attended a school run by the cleric’s movement.
The Turkish government is also convinced Mr Gulen orchestrated the attempted coup in July. Hurriyet’s Selvi said Altintas’s activities and movements on the day of the coup were unclear.
The security forces have now detained 13 people over Monday’s attack, including close relatives of Altintas.
While Turkey has been quick to blame Mr Gulen for the death of the Russian ambassador, the 18 Russian investigators who arrived in Ankara on Tuesday said it was too early to say who had plotted the assassination.
When asked to respond to the comments made by the Turkish foreign minister, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov was not prepared to draw any conclusions.
“We need to wait for the results of the joint investigative group,” he said. “It is really not worth rushing to any conclusions.”
However, Mr Peskov said the murder of ambassador Karlov had been damaging for the Ankara government.
“This is certainly a blow to the country’s prestige,” Mr Peskov said.
Russian and Turkish investigators will work together to investigate the attack on Karlov, the first Moscow envoy to be killed in his post in almost 90 years. Officials made clear that his death would not provoke another crisis in relations between the two countries that have only recently been restored after all but collapsing after Turkish jets shot down a Russian warplane near the Syrian border in November last year.
“We’re sincerely grateful to our Turkish colleagues for their immediate reaction to this barbaric crime and for their condolences,” said Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov after talks with his Turkish counterpart. “There can be no concessions to terrorists.”