Dramatic footage showed the very moment the lone gunman — dressed in a dark suit, white shirt and tie, shot his target in the back as the envoy was speaking at the opening of a Russian photography exhibition in Ankara.
The assailant is seen standing behind the ambassador and then swaggering around the gallery waving his automatic handgun and pointing aggressively into the air.
The man shouts “Allahu Akbar” and then talks in Arabic about pledging allegiance to jihad in Arabic.
He then switches to Turkish, shouting: “Don’t forget about Syria, don’t forget about Aleppo. All those who participate in this tyranny will be held accountable.”
The state-run Anadolu news agency said the gunman had been “neutralised” in a police operation after a 15-minute standoff when he refused to surrender.
The gunman was identified by the Turkish interior minister as 22-year-old Mevlut Mert Altintas, who had worked in the Ankara anti-riot police squad for the last two-and-a-half years.
It was not known if he was on duty at the time and if not, how he managed to gain access to the cultural centre with a weapon.
Media reports said Altintas’s mother, father and sister were detained for questioning at their homes in western Turkey.
Ankara mayor Melih Gokcek speculated on his official Twitter account that the policeman may be linked to the group of exiled preacher Fethullah Gulen, who is blamed for the July coup aimed at toppling President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
It is not yet clear whether the assassin was acting alone and no group has claimed responsibility.
But it will add further to jitters in Turkey, which has been rocked by a wave of deadly bomb attacks carried out by Islamic State jihadists or Kurdish terrorists.
