Time and others report that Turkish leader Recep Erdoğan has used footage of the New Zealand mosque shootings in a video montage.
Footage of the New Zealand mosque shootings that was pulled down by Facebook, YouTube and other social media platforms has resurfaced as a campaign prop in Turkey.
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan screened a montage of videotaped snippets from the attack on Muslim houses of worship in an apparent attempt to galvanize his pious, conservative base ahead of March 31 local elections. At televised rallies in Istanbul and Tekirdag to the west, he showed blurred fragments of suspected attacker Brenton Tarrant’s online manifesto and his livestream from the massacre in Christchurch, New Zealand, which claimed the lives of 50 people.
But what all the reports are missing is a key fact: the video montage also shows a tweet from Yair Netanyahu, the son of Israeli PM Binyamin Netanyahu:
followed by a section from mosque shooter Brenton Tarrant’s manifesto:
“We are coming for Constantinople and we will destroy every mosque and minaret in the city,” which will be “rightfuly Christian-owned once more.”
The implication seems to be that Yair Netanyahu and the mosque shooter were either in cahoots with each other or at least he shares the shooter’s views. Either way, Erdoğan is trying to paint Netanyahu as somehow responsible for the terrible events last week.
Which beggars the question: why has the media ignored this part of Erdoğan’s video montage?
