Man Suspected of Planning to Attack Gallipoli Commemoration Arrested

Turkish police say they’re holding a Syrian national suspected of planning to attack services marking 104 years since the ill-fated World War I Gallipoli campaign. The man, believed to be a member of Islamic State, was arrested in Tekirdag province, not far from the famed peninsula where soldiers from Australia and New Zealand landed on April 25, 1915, in an effort to attack Ottoman forces allied with Germany. The operation was a disaster for the Allies, and the heavy casualties led both Australia and New Zealand to declare April 25 their national memorial day. Many from those countries travel to Gallipoli each year on this date, and police say the suspect was seeking to avenge the killing of 50 Muslims at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, in March. An Australian white supremacist has been charged in those killings. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan angered many in New Zealand for broadly hostile comments he made after the Christchurch massacres and for repeatedly showing video footage of those attacks at political rallies staged by his Islamist-oriented AK Party.