As social media helps them disseminate fake news and disinformation, anti-migrant groups in Türkiye, home to millions of refugees from Syria and migrants from around the world, flourish. Combatting disinformation spread by those groups and often picked by far-right media outlets, the Turkish Presidency’s Communications Directorate disproved claims smearing migrants and refugees.
In a weekly bulletin against disinformation, the Directorate debunked several reports portraying migrants and refugees as violent criminals. One such false report was multiple stab wounds an 11-year-old Turkish boy suffered in an attack by a Syrian national in Istanbul’s Büyükçekmece district. The Directorate said the perpetrator, on the contrary, was a 13-year-old Turkish citizen and the victim was a 12-year-old boy of another nationality. The Directorate said the boy suffered minor injuries and told police he did not know his attacker, who suddenly approached him on the street and started stabbing him.
Another fake report making rounds on social media was accompanied by a video showing a group of young men in civilian clothes engaging in physical work-outs on a seaside promenade in Istanbul’s Pendik district in the company of a trainer shouting instructions. Several social media accounts, including one belonging to Ümit Özdağ, head of the far-right anti-refugee Victory Party (ZP), shared the video, claiming it was Afghan migrants undergoing military training. The Communications Directorate said people in the video were members of the Naval Forces of Pakistan who were staying at a nearby shipyard where a battleship for the Pakistan Navy was being built. The Directorate said the military personnel were in Istanbul for training activities.
The ZP was repeatedly criticized in the past for its actions toward migrants and refugees, including videos Özdağ shared, showing him “interrogating” refugees he came across, “recommending” them to leave Türkiye “as soon as possible” and his tweets about what critics call “false propaganda” against refugees. The party came under fire from non-governmental organizations (NGOs) working for refugee welfare when its supporters last year released a short film entitled “Silent Invasion” depicting a future Türkiye with more Arabs than Turks. The ZP is regarded as a fringe party, and the main opposition, the Republican People’s Party (CHP), is also a proponent of mass deportation, though it uses softer rhetoric. Türkiye hosts the world’s largest refugee population, mostly made up of 3.6 million Syrians living under temporary protection. It has been more than 10 years since the first group of Syrian refugees, consisting of 250 people, entered Türkiye, starting their new lives in the country after fleeing war and persecution of the Bashar Assad regime.
Another video circulating on social media purportedly showed “key figures of terrorist group Daesh in the group’s camp in Gaziantep (a southern Turkish province).” The Directorate said the video showed a Daesh camp but not in Türkiye. The bulletin highlighted that the video was shot in Syria and first emerged in 2014.
