The assassination of Russia’s ambassador to Turkey fits into a long tradition of political violence in a country where the fallout from the Syrian war is deepening the chaos.

Turkey’s toxic combination of problems includes a Kurdish insurgency at home and state purges following a failed coup attempt in July, meaning the security situation will remain extremely tenuous for a while.

While Russia and Turkey suspect the killer of Ambassador Andrei Karlov was part of a wider conspiracy, the Turkish government has come under scrutiny for its tolerance — or sponsorship — of Islamist rebel groups in Syria in recent years that may have indirectly radicalized some young Turks.

“You have a blowback effect,” said Halil Karaveli, a Sweden-based senior fellow at the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute and the Silk Road Studies Program.

He said a mix of hardline Turkish nationalism and Sunni Muslim fundamentalism had been prospering in some quarters in Turkey, creating the potential for homegrown violence.

Whatever motivated gunman Mevlut Mert Altintas, an off-duty policeman killed by police after shooting Karlov at a photo exhibition in Ankara on Monday, has not been confirmed. He shouted religious phrases and appeared to condemn Russian bombardments of rebel-held neighborhoods of Syria’s Aleppo city — the shooting followed protests by Turks who criticized Russia’s support for Syrian President Bashar Assad.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has blamed the movement of U.S.-based Muslim cleric Fethullah Gulen for the assassination, while Russia has said conclusions should be left to the investigators.

Gulen is already blamed for the failed military uprising in July that led to the imposition of a state of emergency, an extension in pre-trial detention, the arrest of around 38,000 people and the purging of more than 100,000 from government jobs.