The mass shooting that occurred in New Zealand’s Christchurch on Friday, killed more than 50 worshipers of the Islamic faith after they became a victim of hate crime. The terrorist (which many around the world failed to acknowledge) Brenton Tarrant used a semi-automatic rifle and walked into a mosque continuously shooting at the followers, over and over again.
All around the world many leaders opted a more compassionate approach and stood in solidarity with the victims, some leaders used their Islamophobia and rise in Islamic migration to justify the attack, However, Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan chose a very different approach in which he used the video the shooter made (while murdering the victims) as an election booster. It was played at 3 rallies along with the excerpt from the 74-page Manifesto.
The video was quickly taken down by social media sites like Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter. Erdogan was criticized by Winston Peters the Foreign Minister of New Zealand, where the publicizing of this video is said to be an offense. Peters also claimed that broadcasting the traumatizing video to the citizens and also endangering them.
Many possibilities came into light after the broadcasting of the ‘video’ at Turkey’s election rally on Sunday in which the main focus by the President was to condemn Islamophobia including the disappointing response of many world leaders and to also point out the weak politicians in Turkey.
However, the video did show the killer mentioning Turkey on various occasions and has also visited Turkey twice stated the President. Erdogan added that the killer also wanted to eliminate Muslims in Turkey from the European side.
Republican People’s Party (CHP) spokesperson Faik Oztrak asked rhetorically if “it was worth showing this bloody massacre in order to gain a few more votes?” He also condemned Erdogan for picking such an insensitive approach to make a political statement, quoted the Anadolu news agency.
