The anti-riot cop who assassinated a top Russian diplomat in Turkey on Monday had apparently taken a leave of absence from the police department around the time of the attack, according to a published report.
Crazed gunman Mevlut Mert Altintas had been a police officer for 2½ years before unconfirmed reports say he was suspended for several weeks until mid-November due to suspected ties with terrorist plotters behind Turkey’s failed July coup, the BBC reported Tuesday.
Probers were trying to determine whether Altintas was motivated by the total annihilation of eastern Aleppo, or was attempting to derail relations with Russia, the BBC said.
Altintas, 22, was born in the sleepy, conservative Turkish town of Soke and attended police college in the Turkish coastal city of Izmir.
Meanwhile, Turkish police detained six people over the killing of Russian Ambassador Andrey Karlov, state media said Tuesday, widening a probe to relatives of the off-duty policeman who shouted “Don’t forget Aleppo!” as he gunned the envoy down.
Both countries cast Monday’s attack — which occurred at an art gallery in the capital, Ankara — as an attempt to undermine a recent thawing of ties that have been strained by Syria’s civil war, where they back opposing sides.
The war, which has killed more than 300,000 people and created a power vacuum exploited by the Islamic State, reached a potential turning point last week when Syrian forces ended rebel resistance in the northern city of Aleppo.
Russia, an ally of President Bashar al-Assad, supported that advance with airstrikes.
Altintas, who also shouted slogans associated with Islamist militancy after shooting Karlov, was killed minutes later by members of Turkey’s special forces.
His mother, father, sister and two other relatives were held in the western province of Aydin, while his flatmate in Ankara was also detained, the state-run Anadolu agency said.
One senior Turkish security official said investigators were focusing on whether Altintas had links to the US-based Muslim cleric Fethullah Gulen, whom Ankara blames for a failed July coup. Gulen has denied responsibility for the coup and Monday’s attack, and has condemned both events.
The slogans that Altintas shouted, which were captured on video and circulated widely on social media, suggested he was aligned to a radical Islamist ideology, rather than that of Gulen, who preaches a message of interfaith dialogue.
“Don’t forget Aleppo, don’t forget Syria. You will not be able to feel safe for as long as our districts are not safe. Only death can take me from here,” he shouted in Turkish.
Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said Monday that he and Russia’s Vladimir Putin had agreed in a telephone call that their cooperation in fighting terrorism should be even stronger after the killing.
Putin said it was aimed at derailing Russia’s attempts to find, with Iran and Turkey, a solution for the Syria crisis.
The countries’ foreign ministers were meeting on Tuesday.
With Post wires