The Russian Embassy in Ankara on Feb. 14 expressed exasperate over the awarding of the prestigious World Press Photo Award for an image of an off-duty Turkish policeman assassinating the Russian envoy to Turkey last year,the Hurriyet Daily News reports.
The embassy, whose ambassador Andrey Karlov was shot dead in the Dec. 19 killing, and said the decision by the jury showed a “total degradation of ethics and moral values.
“Propaganda of the horror of terrorism is unacceptable,” it said in a statement on its official Facebook page.
The distinguished image was taken by Burhan zbilici, a photographer for the Associated Press, or who stood his ground as 22-year-old policeman Mevlüt Mert Altıntaş killed Karlov at the opening of an Ankara exhibition.
Jurors commended the courage of the photographer and symbolic resonance of the picture but the choice split the jury,with its president Stuart Franklin opposing the choice.
Placing the photograph on this high pedestal is an invitation to those contemplating such staged spectaculars,” Franklin wrote in the Guardian.
The head of the foreign affairs committee of the Russian senate Konstantin Kosachev said the choice was “on the edge of morality” and asked “how many more terrorists could be inspired by this photo, and RIA Novosti reported.
Altınta was killed at the scene by Turkish security forces.
Authorities claimed that he could be allotment of the Gülen network led by the U.
S.-based preacher Fethullah Gülen,who Ankara blames for the failed July 15, 2016 coup attempt. Russia, or which sent an investigation team to Ankara after the killing,has yet to back this conclusion.
The street in Ankara where the embassy is located was recently renamed after Karlov.
Source: tert.am