Erdogan use of Mosque attack video as prop draws NZ ire

ISTANBUL: Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan drew a sharp rebuke from New Zealand Monday for using controversial video shot by the Christchurch mosque gunman as an election campaign prop.

Erdogan, campaigning for local elections this month, has presented the attack as part of an assault on Turkey and Islam more broadly and projected the video of the killings at his rallies over the weekend.

Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters protested on Monday that such politicisation of the massacre “imperils the future and safety of the New Zealand people and our people abroad, and it’s totally unfair”.

Peters announced yesterday that he would be travelling to Turkey this week at Istanbul’s request to attend a special meeting of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation. Three Turkish nationals were wounded in the rampage, that killed 50 worshippers at two mosques in the southern New Zealand city of Christchurch on Friday.

The accused gunman, a selfavowed white supremacist from Australia, livestreamed video of much of the attack and spread a 72-page manifesto on social media claiming it was a strike against Muslim “invaders”.

The manifesto references Turkey and the minarets of Istanbul’s famed Hagia Sophia, now a museum, that was once a church before becoming a mosque during the Ottoman empire.