Turkish police shot a tractor driver in the leg after he refused to heed their calls to stop his vehicle in central Ankara on Tuesday, sending the tractor crashing into nearby cars, the state-owned Anadolu news agency reported.
The report said the 45-year-old driver told police in his initial statement that he had been planning to drive to the Israeli Embassy in the Turkish capital to stage a protest there.
Citing a report in the local Cumhuriyet newspaper, The Associated Press reported that the tractor had been driven along a main boulevard in front of the national parliament in central Ankara, and that police guarding the parliament building called on its driver to stop.
An Israeli official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said he believed the incident was not linked to the Israeli mission.
"To the best of our knowledge, this has nothing to do with the embassy. He was on his way to demonstrate outside a [Turkish] government ministry. The incident happened near the ambassador's residence, and not the embassy," the official said.
Israel's Maariv news site reported that the man has been identified as Aydin Sakarya.
