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The fake news about “building 10 mosques in Yerevan” continues to circulate on the Internet, first shared by a Turkish media outlet, and then by a number of Armenian and Azerbaijani media outlets (1, 2, 3, 4). Although the government debunked the claims, and CivilnetCheck revealed that it was fake news, some Armenian sources did not remove it.
A number of Russian sources have also continued to share the fake news. Moreover, analyses and conclusions are being made based on this fake news.
For example, a question arose with Russian Metropolitan Leonid: “Interestingly, when I headed the Yerevan diocese of the Russian Orthodox Church, during bilateral negotiations with Pashinyan about the construction of a Russian spiritual and educational center in Yerevan, he said that when as many Russians live in Yerevan as there are Armenians in Moscow, that center will be built for them.”
The Fact Investigation Platform has investigated the activities of the author of the fake news, Okay Deprem, and identified his connection to Russian propaganda.
Okay Deprem, a Turkish national, poses as a journalist and sociologist. He has no permanent residence, either in Russia or Turkey. He lived in Luhansk for many years, receiving local citizenship. He was interested in Russian culture from an early age, and published in a youth magazine. He studied sociology at a university in Istanbul, studied languages, including Russian. He continued his studies in Germany, then went to Odessa as part of a student exchange program and studied at the Odessa National Institute. Here he worked in the tourism sector, organizing tourist visits. In the early 2000s, he was in Rostov, Sochi, and the North Caucasus. In one of his interviews, he recalls how he drove from Turkey to Donbass. And since 2015, he has covered the Russian-Ukrainian conflict as a journalist accredited by the Russian side, and has been to Donetsk and Luhansk. “I was invited as an observer to the Luhansk elections in the fall of 2016. Until 2019, I lived mainly in Donetsk,” the Turkish journalist said when presenting himself.
In the same interview, a journalist asked if he had changed his opinion about Ukraine after the war in Donbas, to which the Turkish journalist replied: “Of course, it couldn’t have been otherwise. Until 2014, Ukraine was a peaceful country, especially Donbas. …After 2014, nationalism and fascism flourished in Ukraine. Of course, these sentiments existed here earlier, but they were not so widespread. That’s why my friends left Ukraine.” In other words, the Turkish journalist is reproducing Russian propaganda narratives regarding Ukraine.
He advances other Russian propaganda narratives in another interview. Referring to life in Luhansk and Donbass, he says that compared to other settlements in Ukraine, “people live well, receive high salaries, public transport is new, brought from Russia.” He also has an honorable place on the list of Russian fakes, where he is presented as a “fake journalist and a tool in the hands of Kremlin propaganda.”
He conducted an observation mission during the elections in Belarus in early 2025 and in an interview expressed admiration for the policy pursued by the Belarusian leadership and noted that the country “has a special role in the modern political conjuncture.” However, he faced issues in Belarus this September: the authorities refused to let him enter the country and, after holding him in a detention center for 10 days, expelled him without any explanation. After this incident, he said he was moving to Turkey to rest a bit and gather his thoughts.
After a break, we see Deprem again in the Ukrainian source in October. He visited Zaporozhye and laid flowers in memory of the victims. “Russia is using fake foreign journalists to cover up the occupation of Ukrainian territories. This is not journalism, this is propaganda that serves the war,” wrote the Ukrainian National Resistance Center.
This journalist has a column on the “MedyaGünlüğü” platform, and some of this year’s articles relate to the Armenian reality.
For example, one of the articles, titled “Will a new David of Sasun emerge?”, refers to Andranik Tevanyan, who, it should be noted, has left the “Armenia” bloc. The article alleges that Nikol Pashinyan is suppressing all “charismatic leaders and not allowing new Davids of Sasun to emerge.” And despite all that, according to the Turkish columnist, “a few years ago, a powerful opposition force was created in the country called “Mother Armenia.” The Turkish journalist recalled the events of 2023, the opposition rallies, and the arrest of Andranik Tevanyan and wrote: “The current government is so afraid of the birth of a new David of Sasun that it ordered the arrest of Andranik Tevanyan.”
It is noteworthy that Andranik Tevanyan is referred to in another article by this journalist concerning the Prime Minister’s wife, Anna Hakobyan. The article features the ideas and positions of Tevanyan on Anna Hakobyan being a “gray eminence.”
What do we know about the Turkish media outlet sharing the fake news?
The French VIGINUM* (French: Service de vigilance et de protection contre les ingérences numériques étrangères) has published a report on the Russian disinformation campaign Storm-1516. The latter is an information manipulation network organized to exert informational and propaganda influence.
*VIGINUM was established in 2021 with the aim of identifying and preventing foreign digital interference, in particular disinformation campaigns, bot and troll networks, and manipulative propaganda campaigns against France and European countries.
The VIGINUM report identifies 77 information operations, the analysis of which shows that they mainly circulate pro-Russian, anti-Western and anti-Ukrainian narratives and fake publications. Storm-1516 deploys both short-term and rapid actions, e.g., rapid reaction to an event, and long-term impact strategy, e.g., discrediting political figures ahead of elections, etc. To achieve this, they use fake news pages, social media accounts, AI-generated deepfake videos, etc.
What does OdaTv that shared false information on the construction of mosques in Armenia, has to do with all this? According to the VIGINUM report, the Turkish OdaTv was part of Russian disinformation operations.
Hasmik Hambardzumyan
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