Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu called the 2016 assassination of Russian Ambassador to Ankara Andrei Karlov one of the most regrettable events in his ministerial career.
"Not long after I took office in 2015, the first person I had to call was Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. This was after the shooting down [of a Russian] plane [in Syria]. The crisis was very serious, and it took eight months to restore relations. One of the events that was one of the most grievous for me was when I received the news of the death of Russian Ambassador Andrei Karlov," he told Hürriyet on Friday.
Cavusoglu recalled that he was on a plane that night and "was going to land in Moscow." "We got a call on the plane, the audio was bad. They said there had been an attack on the Russian ambassador. I thought there had been a physical attack, he had been hit, he had fallen. But I couldn't realize at first that he had been shot," the minister said. He said he was "extremely sad and confused" about what happened. At a meeting with Lavrov the next day, they discussed what happened, and the Russian side, according to Cavusoglu, said it knew that the Turkish state had no motive to attack Karlov.
Karlov was killed on December 19, 2016, while speaking at the opening of a photo exhibition in Ankara; the assailant, police officer Mevlut Mert Altintas, was eliminated. The Russian MFA qualified the incident as an act of terrorism, and the Russian Investigative committee opened a criminal case under the article "Act of international terrorism." The diplomat was posthumously awarded the title of Hero of Russia.
On November 24, 2015, the Turkish Air Force shot down a Russian Su-24 bomber that was taking part in the anti-terrorist operation in Syria. The plane was shot down by a missile fired by an F-16 fighter aircraft of the Turkish Air Force. One of the pilots died, the second was rescued as a result of a 12-hour operation by Russian and Syrian special forces. During the operation to evacuate the bomber's crew, a Mi-8 helicopter was lost, and a marine contractor was killed.
GSV "Russia - Islamic world"
Photo: Russian Foreign Ministry
Based on materials from TASS