Assassination in Turkey

The cold-blooded assassination of Russian envoy Andrei Karlov in Ankara by a member of Turkey’s security forces immediately brought forth comparisons to the killing of Archduke Franz Ferdinand which sparked the First World War. However, the situation isn’t quite so dire yet. Russia has taken a conciliatory approach so far and Russian President Vladimir Putin spoke to Turkish President Erdogan to assure him that the two countries would fight together. But it does show how quickly regional, and indeed global, conflagrations can be sparked. The killer, police officer Mevlut Mert Altintas, screamed “Don’t forget Aleppo” after opening fire on the ambassador, an obvious reference to Russia’s support of Bashar al-Assad in Syria. The Syrian president is on the verge of retaking Aleppo and his government has been accused of committing mass atrocities. But the rebels, as seen by actions of sympathisers like Altintas, are riddled with extremists in the mould of the Islamic State and the likely effect of this assassination will be an intensification of Russian support against the rebels.          Turkey has a more complicated relationship with Assad. It turned against him in 2011 but Erdogan has slowly been building bridges with Assad, due to – among other things – the Kurdish insurgency in Syria which has spilled over into Turkey. That process could accelerate now.

Relations between Russia and Turkey have been slowly improving after the incident last year when the Turkish Air Force shot down a Russian aircraft. Russia is even supporting Turkey’s military campaign against Kurdish rebels in Al-Bab, which was expanded to include IS after they killed a Turkish soldier in the area earlier this month.          The position the Western countries will take after the Ankara assassination is more complicated. They have accused Syria and Russia of war crimes against the rebels without acknowledging the brutality of the rebels themselves. That position was always hypocritical and now it should be untenable too. The Western countries have militarily and financially supported the rebels and so Russia could plausibly argue that they too are morally responsible for the assassination. The assassination took place on the eve of a planned summit between the foreign and defence ministers of Turkey, Russia and Iran. The absence of Turkey’s Nato and Gulf allies already showed that Erdogan was moving towards a new partnership. He was upset at Western criticism of his heavy-handedness after the coup attempt and now will likely drift closer to the Russian camp. This new Eurasian alliance will require Erdogan to show Putin that he is willing to take immediate action against anyone involved in the assassination. The Syrian crisis has now become a Turkish and Russian crisis too, and this may end up shaking up regional alliances more than any other recent event.