Fact-Check: Old Video Linked With Recent Turkey-Syria Earthquakes

The video has been on the internet since November 2022 and predates the recent earthquakes in Turkey and Syria.
Abhilash Mallick
WebQoof
Updated:

Fact-Check: The video is from the recent Turkey-Syria earthquake.

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(Photo: The Quint)

<div class="paragraphs"><p>Fact-Check: The video is from the recent Turkey-Syria earthquake.</p></div>
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A video showing a baby consoling an infant has gone viral on the internet, with people linking it to the recent earthquakes in Turkey and Syria that have claimed over 45,000 lives.

A 7.8-magnitude earthquake hit southeastern Turkey and parts of Syria in the early hours of Monday, 6 February, which was followed by a series of earthquakes, with the latest one Monday, 20 February.

The claim: People sharing the video said that the children lost their parents, so the older child was pretending to breastfeed her brother to make him stop crying.

An archive of the post can be found here.

(Archives of more such posts can be found here and here.)

The truth: We found that the video has been on the internet since November 2022, and it predates the recent earthquakes in Turkey and Syria.

How did we find that out:

  • We conducted a keyword search for videos from Turkey and Syria and found a version of the video that had a TikTok watermark.

  • The video was uploaded on TikTok by a user called "anelya.495".

  • We looked for the user on TikTok and found the video, which was published on 26 November 2022, with a Russian caption that translated to ‘#children laughing.’

An archive of the post can be found here.

  • It is clear that the video has been on the internet before the recent earthquakes in Turkey and Syria.

Conclusion: While the location and source of the original video are not known, it is clear that the video is not linked to the recent earthquakes in Turkey and Syria.

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Published: 22 Feb 2023,06:59 PM IST

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