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2019

  • March 2019: Turkey’s Reactions to the Terror Attack in New Zealand

On the March 15, 2019, 50 people have been killed at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand. This is indeed one of the most tragic issues of 2019. It also shows the global level of the increasing ethno-religious oriented tensions among the radical individuals and groups. Right after this tragic issue, Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has condemned the terrorist attacks on mosques. He saw this issue as one of the sad examples of rising racism and Islamophobia. He also noted that, “With this attack, hostility towards Islam, that the world has been idly watching and even encouraging for some time, has gone beyond individual harassment to reach the level of mass killing… It is clear that the understanding represented by the killer that also targets our country, our people and myself, has started to take over Western societies like a cancer…” Likewise, Turkish president, the head of the Turkey’s presidency of Religious Affairs (Diyanet Isleri Baskanlığı), Ali Erbaş, has noted that this attack is one of the examples of the rising intolerance of the Muslims among the non-Muslim majority countries. Beyond these official declarations, some of the Sunni Muslim communities in Turkey reacted to the attacks from their social media accounts.

D 19 March 2019    AAhmet Erdi Öztürk

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