Turkey arrests exhibition organizer over killing of Russian Ambassador Karlov
Turkey has arrested the organizer of an exhibition in Ankara where a gunman assassinated the Russian ambassador in December 2016, RFE/RL reported citing official Anadolu news agency.
The Turkish media on December 28 said Mustafa Timur Ozkan had been ordered taken into custody by an Ankara judge on charges of deliberate participation in a murder.
Russia’s Ambassador to Turkey, Andrei Karlov, was shot on December 19, 2016, while speaking at a photography exhibit in the Turkish capital.
The attacker shouted "Don't forget Aleppo!" and other words that seemed to refer to Russia's involvement in the war in neighboring Syria.
Turkish authorities said Karlov's killer was Mevlut Mert Altintas, a 22-year-old policeman who was off-duty at the time. Altintas was shot dead by police at the scene.
Turkish officials have detained several other people suspected of involvement in the ambassador's killing over the past year.
Ozkan, who had organized the exhibition of Russian landscape photographs at the gallery in Ankara's upscale Cankaya district, had initially been detained in January but then released.
The authorities did not immediately say what led them to focus again on Ozkan.