Andrei Karlov

Shot on 19 December 2016 at an art gallery in Ankara by the Turkish policeman Mevlut Mert Altintas; the Russian ambassador was killed at the opening of a photography exhibition.

Overview

Karlov, a career diplomat serving as ambassador to Turkey during the Syria war rapprochement, was speaking at the Cagdas Sanatlar gallery opening of a show of Russian photography when the off-duty riot policeman Altintas, assigned to the event security, drew his police pistol and shot him from behind, shouting the Syrian cities of Aleppo and the abandonment of the rural areas. The gunman was killed by police in a fifteen minute standoff. Russia and Turkey jointly declared the murder an attempt to poison their reconciliation; the Fetullah Gulen movement was accused by Ankara and denied involvement. The murder, the first filmed assassination of an ambassador in the social media age, briefly froze the region diplomacy and became the emblem of blowback from the Syria conflict.