The image of an assassin standing above the limp body of his victim under the bright white lights of an art gallery looks staged. But it is all too real. Early on Monday evening, in Turkey’s capital city Ankara, an off-duty Turkish police officer took aim at Andrei Karlov, Russia’s ambassador, while he was delivering remarks at the opening of an art exhibition. He fired several shots at the ambassador before shouting slogans about the war in Syria and the fighting in Aleppo.
The terror act comes at a difficult time for Turkey and the region as a whole. Turkey is reeling after a recent wave of extremist attacks – from a bombing in Istanbul to one targeting a public bus in the heart of Anatolia. At the same time, the fight for Aleppo has been won by Syrian president Bashar Al Assad with the critical support of Iran and Russia. Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan has invested political capital in calling for Mr Al Assad’s immediate removal from power. This led to open confrontation with Russia that culminated in Turkish fighter jets destroying a plane that had momentarily entered Turkish airspace while conducting raids in Syria.
Fuelled by mutual energy needs and struggling economies, Mr Erdogan mended fences with Russian president Vladimir Putin this year. With the assassination of the Russian ambassador, however, Mr Erdogan now faces a serious crisis. How could such a horrific attack have taken place? After last summer’s attempted coup, what is the state of Turkish security forces?
Perhaps more challenging will be how Mr Erdogan negotiates Turkey’s relationship with Russia while appeasing the growing anti-Russian sentiment sweeping the country. Ankara has recently worked with Russia to secure civilian safe corridors in Aleppo despite backlash from some sectors of Mr Erdogan’s political base. This anger is not surprising considering the anti-Assad position Turkey embraced shortly after the start of the Syrian civil war.
Russia has said that it doesn’t expect the attack to damage its relationship with Turkey and it is probably right on a diplomatic level. The headache is on the domestic front. With an economy that is lagging, waves of extremist attacks and public outcry about the war in Syria, Mr Erdogan faces several serious and interconnected challenges in 2017. As we argued in Monday’s paper, Turkey is unable to face these problems by itself and should look to allies for assistance.
