He has been hailed for his courage in the wake of a deadly gun attack in the capital, Vienna, after footage of him intervening to help the wounded, including a policeman, spread on social media.
A video shot from a nearby building shows the pair exiting the metro station and helping panicked people scatter from there as the shooting still echoed down the street.
The Interior Ministry confirmed on Tuesday, without naming the two friends, that they had helped during an attack by a radical young man in northern Macedonia late Monday night.
The attacker killed four people before firing on police.
In a video posted online immediately after the attack, they said that both Austrian citizens of Turkish background, Mikael Ozan and Recep Tayyip Gટેltekin, had planned to “drink the last coffee” together before storming the Swedenplatz.
The first shots can be heard, whenever they reach a busy square by the river, they find “people lying on the ground covered in blood”.
They went to help a frightened old woman who was looking for a place to hide – just saw a wounded policeman on the ground.
“We couldn’t act like we didn’t see him,” Oz said. “We rushed him to the ambulance”, supporting him under his shoulder as the shooting continued.
Two semi-professional martial arts practitioners issued an appeal for unity among “Jews, Christians and Muslims”, which was picked up by several Austrian media outlets.
“We are Muslims of Turkish descent, we hate any kind of terrorism. We are with Austria, with Vienna, we respect Austria, ‘he said.
Turkish media have reported that President Recep Tayyip Erdogan was called to congratulate the pair.
