Turkish invasion of Syria: old photos presented as new

Օn October 9, 2019, the Turkish Armed Forces invaded north-eastern areas of Syria populated by Kurds, which are (were) under the control of Kurdish detachments. Within days, the UN announced that hundreds of thousands of people had become refugees. At the same time, there are already reports of casualties among civilians.

The reaction of Armenian social networks

Turkey’s actions have received widespread response on social media, including the Armenian domain. Dozens of photos attributed to recent Turkish actions began circulating on Armenian Facebook pages, receiving thousands of views and likes. In their posts, users compare the actions against the Kurds with the Armenian Genocide.

Most of the photos, however, are old and have nothing to do with the Turkish invasion on October 9. Thus, for example, the VEnews page with about 43,000 followers has published a series of images that thousands of people liked and shared.

A photo of the Green March, carried out by hundreds of thousands of Moroccans in 1975, is presented as “October, 2019, Syria … Doesn’t it look like 1915?”

Fip.am has already covered topic this separately.

It is this picture that has gained the most popularity these days. The same photo was also posted on the Facebook page of asekose.am and has been shared 1,800 times.

Another photo published by VEnews features a baby boy with tears on his face.

The caption reads: “Turkey is bombing the north of Syria; a picture of this Syrian kid was over the past few days. Turk remains a Turk!.”

The picture was actually taken in March 2017 and again has nothing to do with Turkish invasion these days. The picture depicts a child that fled from an area controlled by the Islamic State.

Another publication on the same page shows several children and the caption reads: “The innocent children of Syria! A Turk remains a Turk..”

The first photo in this publication was made in November 2016 in Aleppo. The second photo was taken in April 2016 in Idlib. We have already mentioned about the third picture above. The fourth depicts a Syrian girl photographed at a refugee camp in Jordan in October 2012.

A photo of a soldier with a rifle aimed at a child was posted on the Facebook page of Asekose.am on October 13. There is a fork in the child’s hand, and an elderly woman behind him is not visible.

We were unable to find out the source of the photo or its authenticity in general. Some sources present it as a picture of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The photo is at least three years old, thus it has nothing to do with the Turkish invasion of recent days.

Another photo posted by at least three different Facebook pages- Guide TV channel, Armenian news and First Info– was shared by hundreds of people. All three platforms published the photo with the same caption: “11.10.2019 Syria … Turkey has no history, it has only a criminal past and present …”.

The picture of the little boy is actually from Yemen and was made in 2015.

On October 3, VEnews posted a video on YouTube with the headline “Turkish military men kill a Syrian woman 18+ “, which depicts how an armored car with a Turkish flag runs over an old woman. The video garnered about 37,000 views in two days. In fact, the video was shot in 2017 in the Turkish province of Diyarbakir, in the Kurdish region of Diyarbakir.

Below are real photos of the Turkish invasion launched on October 9, from Al Jazeera and Yahoo websites.

Hovhannes Nazaretyan