Erdogan's use of Mosque shooter video draws NZ rebuke

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.

Australian Brenton Tarrant, 28, a suspected white supremacist, was charged with murder on Saturday after a lone gunman opened fire at two mosques in the southern New Zealand city of Christchurch on Friday, killing 50 worshippers including three Turkish nationals.

Erdogan is seeking to drum up support for his Islamist-rooted AK Party in March 31 local elections by presenting the attack as part of an assault on Turkey and Islam more broadly.

At weekend election rallies he showed video footage of the shootings which the gunman had broadcast on Facebook, as well as extracts from a "manifesto" posted by the attacker and later taken down.

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."

The accused gunman, a self-avowed white supremacist from Australia, livestreamed video of much of the attack and wrote in his 72-page manifesto that 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.

New Zealand authorities moved quickly to try to stop the spread of the shooter's video, warning that anyone sharing the footage faced prosecution, and Facebook removed the images from hundreds of thousands of its pages.

But at weekend campaign events, Erdogan projected the video and repeatedly referenced the attack, which he portrayed as a sign of rising Islamophobia that the West has ignored.

"This is not an isolated event, it is something more organised," he said during a campaign event on Monday in Canakkale in western Turkey.

"They are testing us with the message they are sending us from New Zealand, 16,500 km (10,250 miles) from here."

Erdogan did not project the video at the Monday event.

Peters said he had complained directly to visiting Turkish Vice-President Fuat Oktay and Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu.

"We made it very clear that we oppose terrorism in whatever shape and form it might be and that we are for a free and open society," Peters said he told the Turkish officials.

"We had a long dialogue on the need for any other country, or Turkey for that matter, to ensure that our country, New Zealand, was not misrepresented," he told a press conference.

"We did not start or bring about this disaster and they clearly understood that," he said.

Peters announced on Tuesday that he would be travelling to Turkey this week at Istanbul's request to attend a special meeting of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation.

Speaking of the upcoming OIC meeting in Istanbul, Peters said: "This important event will allow New Zealand to join with our partners in standing against terrorism and speaking up for values such as understanding and religious tolerance."

"We are very clear that the terrorist attack in Christchurch, committed by a person who is not a New Zealander, is utterly contrary to our core beliefs," he said.

But Erdogan on Tuesday doubled down on his earlier comments by calling on New Zealand to restore the death penalty for the gunman, warning that Turkey would make the attacker pay for his act if New Zealand did not.

"You heinously killed 50 of our siblings. You will pay for this. If New Zealand doesn't make you, we know how to make you pay one way or another," Erdogan told an election rally of thousands in northern Turkey. He did not elaborate.

He said Turkey was wrong to have abolished the death penalty 15 years ago, and added that New Zealand should make legal arrangements so that the Christchurch gunman could face capital punishment.

"If the New Zealand parliament doesn't make this decision I will continue to argue this with them constantly. The necessary action needs to be taken," he said.

Despite Peters' intervention, an extract from the manifesto was flashed up on a screen at Erdogan's rally again on Tuesday, as well as brief footage of the gunman entering one of the mosques and shooting as he approached the door.

Erdogan has said the gunman issued threats against Turkey and the president himself, and wanted to drive Turks from Turkey's northwestern, European region. Majority Muslim Turkey's largest city, Istanbul, is split between an Asian part east of the Bosphorus, and a European half to the west.

Erdogan's AK Party, which has dominated Turkish politics for more than 16 years, is battling for votes as the economy tips into recession after years of strong growth. Erdogan has cast the local elections as a "matter of survival" in the face of threats including Kurdish militants, Islamophobia and incidents such as the New Zealand shootings.

A senior Turkish security source said Tarrant entered Turkey twice in 2016 - for a week in March and for more than a month in September. Turkish authorities have begun investigating everything from hotel records to camera footage to try to ascertain the reason for his visits, the source said.