On 12 April 2021, Nurkić sparked controversy in former Yugoslavia after marking the beginning of Ramadan by 'tweeting' an image of the Meštrović Pavilion in 1944, when it was converted into a mosque by the Ustasha regime in the Independent State of Croatia, a Nazi puppet state established in the occupied Yugoslavia. During that time, the Pavilion bore the name of Croatian fascist dictator and genocide perpetrator, "Poglavnik" Ante Pavelić (, ).