By: Ankita Kulkarni
February 16 2023
False: Video shows Turkish actor Burak Özçivit helping victims of the recent Turkey-Syria earthquake.
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Fact-Check
The Verdict False
A clip from a Turkish web series was misinterpreted as an actor assisting rescue operations.
Claim ID fe2f7040
Context
Rescue operations continue in Turkey and Syria following the massive earthquakes that left at least 40,000 dead in Turkey and Syria, as reported by Reuters. Several countries have sent teams of rescuers and aid packages to these disaster zones to aid search and rescue. Amid this, a Facebook post shared on February 8, 2023, shows a man being interviewed by a journalist, and the caption reads, "Osman Bey During Earthquake (Burak Ozcivit)." The video has 60k views. Other versions of the video show the same person rescuing an older man from what seems like a hazardous place. The video is also viral on Twitter and YouTube with similar claims. However, the video has been misinterpreted.
In Fact
The man seen in the video is a Turkish actor named Burak Özçivit, also popularly known as Osman Bey, based on a fictional character he plays in a TV series. After running a reverse image search, we found that the video is a scene from the first episode of the Turkish web series called "Kara Sevda," (Endless Love) released in 2015. The visuals shared online can be seen in a longer video uploaded to the series' official YouTube channel on October 15, 2015. At the 8:53 mark, as the story progresses in the series, we can see Burak’s character saving an older man from an accident at a mining site. The episode also shows a reporter interviewing him.
We also found a Twitter video of Burak and his wife, Fahriye Evcen, announcing donations for the victims of the earthquake, adding that they regret not being in the field to help due to their newly-born second child. This proves that the Turkish actor was not at the rescue and search sites.
Logically and other organizations have been continuously debunking such several misattributed videos that are going viral with false claims incorrectly linking them to the recent earthquakes in Turkey and Syria.
The Verdict
A scene from a Turkish drama series has been used to spread false news that actor Özçivit was spotted helping the victims of the earthquake in Turkey. Therefore, we have marked the claim as false.