Killer of Russian envoy had provided security for Erdogan: report

Mevlut Mert Altintas, 22, was a member of the Ankara anti-riot police squad for two-and-a-half years and had been on bodyguard duty at eight events attended by the Turkish president since July's failed coup

Wreaths are left on the the road leading to the Russian embassy in Ankara on December 21, 2016, two days after Moscow's ambassador to Turkey was gunned down by a Turkish policeman. Adem Altan/AFP

ISTANBUL // The young Turkish policeman who killed Russia’s ambassador to Ankara this week had provided security for president Recep Tayyip Erdogan eight times since the July 15 failed coup.

He had been on bodyguard duty at eight events attended by the Turkish president, according to a report in the daily Hurriyet newspaper.

Mevlut Mert Altintas, 22, was a member of the Ankara anti-riot police squad for two-and-a-half years. On the occasions he was guarding the president, he was part of the second wave of Mr Erodgan’s security detail, after the president’s 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 Hurriyet about how Altintas regularly worked in close proximity to president Erdogan call into question Turkey’s vetting procedures. The paper’s well-connected journalist Abdulkadir Selvi said Altintas had called in sick

In a telephone call Turkish foreign minister Mevlut Cavusoglu told his American counterpart John Kerry that Turkey believed the cleric Fethullah Gulen, was behind the assassination plot and are investigating possible links between

Atintas and Gulenism, after it emerged that the young police officer 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 well-connected journalist Abdulkadir Selvi said Altintas had called in sick on July 15, the day of the acoup but hs movements and activities that night were unclear.

The security forces have now detained 13 people over the attack including close relatives of Altintas.

While Turkey has been quick to blame Fethullah 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, Kemlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said it was too early 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 on probing the attack on Mr Karlov, the first Moscow envoy to be killed in his post in almost 90 years. Officials made clear that his death will not provoke another crisis in relations between the two countries that have only recently been restored after all but collapsing when 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 bilateral talks with his Turkish counterpart. “There can be no concessions to terrorists.”

* Associated Press