Turkey's Erdogan continues use of NZ attack video to win votes despite reassurances

Blurred video of last week's shooting of 50 people at mosques in New Zealand was shown again at a rally of Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan on Friday, two hours after New Zealand's foreign minister said he understood such footage was no longer being shown. On election trail for a March 31 local vote, Erdogan has projected the video and repeatedly referenced the attack that killed 50 people, saying it targeted Islam and Turkey.

The gunman's so-called "manifesto" mentions Turkey and the minarets of Istanbul's landmark Hagia Sophia, now a museum, that was once a church before becoming a mosque during the Ottoman empire.

Foreign Minister Winston Peters arrived in Istanbul and met Erdogan earlier on Friday. He later told reporters he did not ask Erdogan to stop showing at election rallies the video of the shooting in Christchurch because he understood its screening had stopped.