\nJEDDAH: Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan was condemned on Wednesday for \u201cvile, offensive and reckless\u201d comments after last week\u2019s Christchurch mosque terrorist attacks.<\/p>\n
\nAustralia summoned the Turkish ambassador in Canberra to explain the remarks, and New Zealand dispatched its foreign minister to Ankara to \u201cset the record straight, face to face.\u201d<\/p>\n
\nBrenton Tarrant, 28, an Australian white supremacist, was charged with murder on Saturday after he shot dead 50 people during Friday prayers at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand.<\/p>\n
\nErdogan, in election campaign rallies for his AK Party, urged New Zealand to restore the death penalty and said Turkey would make the killer pay if New Zealand did not.<\/p>\n
\nHe said anti-Muslim Australians who came to Turkey would be \u201csent back in coffins, like their grandfathers at Gallipoli,\u201d and he accused Australian and New Zealand forces of invading Turkey during the First World War \u201cbecause it is Muslim land.\u201d<\/p>\n
\nBut\u00a0an international affairs scholar in Riyadh\u00a0said Erdogan\u2019s comments should not be taken as representative of Muslims.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n“He is a propagandist and an unpredictable politician,\u201d Dr. Hamdan Al-Shehri\u00a0told Arab News. \u201cHe keeps saying these things and then he issues an apology. Right now, he is making these incendiary comments to win elections.\u201d<\/p>\n
\nIt was inappropriate behavior for a head of state, Al-Shehri said. \u201cWhich president would use such language and issue these kind of comments?\u201d<\/p>\n
\nIn his speech, Erdogan said that the Gallipoli peninsula campaign in 1915 was in fact an attempt by British colonial forces to relieve their Russian allies. The attack was a military disaster, and more than 11,000 Australian and New Zealand forces were killed. Thousands of people from both countries travel each year to Turkey for war memorial services, and the anniversary is marked on Anzac Day every April 25.<\/p>\n
\n\u201cRemarks have been made by the Turkish President Erdogan that I consider highly offensive to Australians and highly reckless in this very sensitive environment,\u201d Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison said after summoning the Turkish ambassador and dismissing the \u201cexcuses\u201d offered.<\/p>\n
\n\u201cI am expecting, and I have asked, for these comments to be clarified, to be withdrawn.\u201d Morrison described claims about Australia and New Zealand\u2019s response to the white supremacist attack as \u201cvile.\u201d He accused Erdogan of betraying the promise of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk to forge peace between the two countries.<\/p>\n
\nA memorial at Gallipoli carries Ataturk\u2019s words: \u201cThere is no difference between the Johnnies and the Mehmets … after having lost their lives on this land they have become our sons as well.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\u201cAtaturk sought to transform his country into a modern nation and an embracing nation, and I think these comments are at odds with that spirit,\u201d Morrison said.<\/p>\n
\nNew Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said her deputy, Foreign Minister Winston Peters, would travel to Turkey to seek clarification of Erdogan\u2019s comments. \u201cHe is going there to set the record straight, face-to-face,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\n\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Erdogan\u2019s \u2018vile\u2019 comments on Christchurch mosques shootings dismissed as not representative of Muslims JEDDAH: Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan was condemned on Wednesday for \u201cvile, offensive and reckless\u201d comments after last week\u2019s Christchurch mosque terrorist attacks. Australia summoned the Turkish ambassador in Canberra to explain the remarks, and New Zealand dispatched its foreign minister to…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-36543","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-middle_east_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36543","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=36543"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36543\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=36543"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=36543"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=36543"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}