ANKARA, December 21. /TASS/. Turkey’s President Tayyip Recep Erdogan said on Wednesday the investigators had uncovered a link between the killer of Russian Ambassador Andrei Karlov and FETO, an organization associated with the exiled Islamist preacher Fethullah Gulen.
"This man (Mevlut Mert Altintas) was a member of FETO and there’s no need to cover up this fact," Erdogan said. "The place where he grew up and his latest status are all but indicative of this."
"It should be said openly that members of that filthy organization can still be found in the ranks of our police and in the Armed Forces," he said.
Erdogan recalled that a group of experts from Moscow was taking part in the investigative actions. "Investigators and our intelligence services are engaged in the process. I hope they will get the results shortly and we’ll make them public."
"There are some shreds of data regarding (Altintas’s) connections abroad," the Turkish president said.
Ambassador to Turkey, Andrei Karlov was assassinated in an arts gallery in Ankara on Monday when he was opening a photographic exhibition entitled ‘Russia from Kaliningrad to Kamchatka through the Traveler’s Eyes’. The Turkish authorities said the gunman, Mevlut Mert Altintas, had been a police officer.
The security forces eliminated the attacker on the spot. The Russian Foreign Ministry described the killing as a terrorist act.
Turkish government says Fethullah Gulen, an acclaimed Islamist preacher of Turkish descent currently living in exile in the US, was immediately involved the July 17, 2016 abortive coup attempt in this country.