Alalam Turkey

Russian ambassador Andrey Karlov, 62, was fatally shot in the Turkish capital of Ankara while delivering a speech at an art gallery on Monday. The man who assassinated the Russian diplomat was identified as a 22-year-old officer with the Turkish riot police.

The assassination raises a range of questions about Turkey’s actions and its ability to provide protection to foreign officials, former US diplomat Jim Jatras told RT.

“Let’s remember that the security of diplomatic personnel – [the] responsibility for that – belongs to the house government – in this case Turkey. And think the real question right now ... [is] did Turkey do everything they could have and should have done in order to protect ambassador Karlov? Did they slip up in some way?” Jatras said.

“And we also have to worry about the prospect that there may have been some inside collusion, inside the Turkish establishment. We had the purge of personnel by Erdogan after the failed coup,” he added.

While Turkey has allegedly supported various terrorists across the region, and there are lot terrorism supporters in the country, the attack took place just before “the meeting that is due to take place tomorrow among the foreign ministers of Turkey, Russia and Iran,” and might have been aimed at undermining recently-mended Russia-Turkey relations, Jatras said.

“Let’s also remember that for a long time Turkey ... supported terrorist forces from the Northern Caucasus, working against Russia. There are a lot of those people inside Turkey. Whether anybody had any kind of relationship with any of these kind of terrorist groups, whether connected to the Caucasus, whether connected to Syria or not,” Jatras said.

“From the gunman’s words we have an indication it was a part of his motivation in any case. So there are a lot of unanswered questions here, and I hope Turkey can reassure Moscow, truthfully, that they did everything possible and this is somebody who somehow slipped through despite their best efforts”, RT reported.

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