Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is utilising the massacre in two mosques in New Zealand’s Christchurch as a tool to make political gains ahead of March 31 local election, the Economist said on Thursday.
“Mr Erdogan has used the attack to score political points and whip up his conservative base ahead of local elections in late March,” the website said.
New Zealand was shaken by a horrifying attack on March 15, when fifty people were killed and dozens injured when a gunman opened fire in two mosques during Friday prayers. The Australian gunman, Brenton Tarrant, had uploaded what he said was a manifesto to his social media accounts before live streaming the attack on his Facebook account.
Erdoğan has been blaming the killings on global Islamophobia and has tied the slaying of Muslims in New Zealand to what he said was a global threat to Turkey.
While most news agencies and social media sites have tried their best to remove footage of the attacks that Tarrant live streamed, Erdoğan has shown the footage at rallies ahead of upcoming local elections that were broadcast live to millions of viewers around Turkey.
The Turkish President has accused the West of preparing the Christchurch killer’s online manifesto during his rallies.
“There is a very serious group behind this,” The Economist quoted Erdoğan as saying, “because why does the West keep silent? Why does the Western media keep silent? They found it, they prepared it, and they handed it to him.”
“It is a confrontation Mr Erdogan seems to relish—especially when an election is looming,” The Economist said.
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