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President Recep Tayyip Erdogan condemned Saturday night's shooting at the White House Correspondents' Dinner and spoke by phone with President Donald Trump to personally convey his wishes for a swift recovery, following one of the most dramatic security incidents to occur at the annual Washington event in decades.
Gunshots rang out shortly after 8:30 p.m. Eastern time on April 25 at the Washington Hilton hotel, where Trump was attending the White House Correspondents' Association dinner, his first appearance at the event as a sitting president.
A suspect, identified by sources as Cole Tomas Allen of Torrance, California, attempted to rush past a security checkpoint near the main magnetometer screening area just outside the ballroom while dinner was being served inside.
He fired at least one shot before being chased down and apprehended. One law enforcement officer was struck in a bullet-resistant vest and is expected to recover fully. No other injuries were reported.
Trump, seated alongside First Lady Melania Trump at the head table, was swiftly surrounded by Secret Service agents and evacuated from the venue along with Vice President JD Vance and several senior Cabinet members, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio, FBI Director Kash Patel, and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. The roughly 2,600 attendees, including hundreds of journalists and senior officials, were directed to take cover as shouts of "shots fired" echoed through the venue.
Hours before his phone call with Trump, Erdogan took to social media to denounce the attack.
Writing on X, he said he condemned the armed assault attempt at the White House Correspondents' dinner in Washington the previous night, adding that it was a cause for relief that neither the president, Melania Trump, nor anyone else had been harmed. He then offered a pointed statement on political norms: in democracies, he wrote, the struggle of ideas is waged with ideas, and there is no room for any form of violence.
He extended his condolences to Trump, the first lady, the U.S. administration, and the American people. Erdogan subsequently followed up the post with a direct phone call to Trump, in which he personally delivered his get-well wishes in the wake of the attack.
The Washington Hilton carries a particular resonance in American political memory. It was outside the same hotel in 1981 that John Hinckley Jr. shot and seriously wounded President Ronald Reagan as he was leaving an event. Reagan survived, but his press secretary James Brady sustained a grave head wound that left him permanently disabled, later becoming a prominent voice in the gun control movement.
The hotel's lobby, which remains open to general guests during large events, has previously drawn scrutiny over the security configuration for the correspondents' dinner, with former FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe noting in the aftermath of Saturday's incident that preparations had been organized at nearly the level of a national security event given the concentration of senior government officials in attendance.
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