Assassination of Galip Balkar

On 9 March 1983, Galip Balkar, the 47-year-old Turkish ambassador to Yugoslavia, was shot while his car was stopped at a red light at a major intersection in downtown Belgrade. Two gunmen opened fire with small firearms, wounding Balkar and his chauffeur, Kaya Necet. As the attackers fled the scene, they killed Željko Milivojević, a Yugoslav student who tried to stop their escape. Two Yugoslav security agents pursued them, and gunfire was exchanged; one agent, Slobodan Brajević, was wounded, and a ricocheted bullet slightly wounded an office worker, Zorica Solotić.

The attackers were identified as Harutyun Krikor Levonian and Alexander Elbekyan (also rendered Rafi Alexander Elbekian), both holding Lebanese passports and having arrived in Yugoslavia from Beirut on 6–7 March. Levonian, seriously wounded, was captured shortly after the attack; Elbekyan was arrested about eight hours later. The same day, an anonymous caller to the Associated Press in Athens claimed responsibility on behalf of the Justice Commandos of the Armenian Genocide (JCAG), a militant group blamed for at least a dozen attacks on Turkish targets between 1975 and 1987. Similar calls were made to news outlets in Paris and Beirut, with messages describing the attack as intended to draw attention to what the group called "the national problem of the Armenian people."

Balkar died on 11 March in a Belgrade neurosurgical clinic following emergency surgery for a head wound and a wound through the right shoulder into the spine. Yugoslav leaders, including Presidency President Petar Stambolic, Prime Minister Milka Planinc, and Foreign Secretary Lazar Mojsov, sent condolences to Turkish counterparts. Balkar's body was flown to Ankara, and his funeral was held there on 15 March. On 17 March 1983, he was posthumously awarded the Order of the Yugoslav Flag with Ribbon by the Yugoslav Presidency.

Balkar's death brought the number of Turks killed in such attacks over the preceding decade to 26, part of a broader pattern in which more than 300 people had been wounded and 35 killed since the mid-1970s. Turkey called on Western governments for assistance in preventing further attacks on its diplomats. On 14 April 1983, the Armenian Patriarch of Istanbul, Shnork Kaloustian, appealed to Armenians worldwide to oppose those responsible for such violence, and religious and lay leaders held a memorial march in Istanbul's Taksim Square.

The Belgrade Public Prosecutor charged Levonian (23) and Elbekian (21) with the assassination of Balkar and the attempted killing of Necet; Levonian was additionally charged with the attempted killing of Brajević, and Elbekian with the killing of Milivojević. Both were defended by Yugoslav lawyer Srđa Popović. Because Levonian's health had been compromised by his wound and Elbekian was a minor at the time of arrest, neither received the death penalty. On 9 March 1984, exactly one year after the attack, both were sentenced to 20 years' imprisonment, with expulsion from Yugoslavia to follow completion of their sentences. According to a 1987 statement from a group in Athens, Levonian was released by Yugoslav authorities in June 1987, reportedly on medical grounds after becoming paralyzed following a stroke; he was said to be living in Yerevan under a different name.