"Many Turkish people have protested to oust Recep Tayyip Erdogan over the arrest of the mayor of Istanbul, a key political rival that is more popular," read the Thai-language caption to a Facebook video shared on March 20, 2025.
The video shows city streets filled with people holding up their mobile phones to light up the night sky.
It emerged after Imamoglu was detained by Turkish police on March 19, prompting outrage from the opposition and triggering street protests and clashes with riot police (archived link).
Imamoglu of the main opposition CHP is President Erdogan's main political rival and his detention came just days before the party was expected to name him as its candidate for the 2028 presidential election.
His arrest, and subsequent jailing as a result of a graft and terror probe, has sparked Turkey's worst unrest in years and drawn international condemnation (archived link).
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Screenshot of the false Facebook post, captured on March 24, 2025
The same video was shared alongside similar claims elsewhere on Facebook here and here as well as English, Arabic and Greek posts.
But the circulating video was filmed in Serbia, not Turkey as the posts claimed.
Belgrade anti-graft protest
A reverse image search using keyframes from the falsely shared video led to the same footage in an X post that said it showed Serbia's capital Belgrade on March 15 (archived link).
The March 15 protest was the largest in a series of anti-corruption demonstrations that have upended the Balkan country since November 2024 (archived link).
The movement formed after the collapse of a railway station roof in the city of Novi Sad, killing 14 people and igniting long-simmering anger over alleged corruption and lax oversight in construction projects (archived link).
The death toll from the tragedy has since risen to 16.
Serbia's interior ministry said at least 107,000 people had turned out, while the Public Assembly Archive -- a group that monitors crowd size -- gave a much higher estimate of between 275,000 to 325,000 people.
AFP distributed photos and video of the crowd that are similar to the footage falsely shared online.
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Screenshot comparison of the falsely shared footage (left) and the AFP distributed photo (top right) and video (right), with corresponding features highlighted
The footage was filmed at the Slavija square in central Belgrade (archived link).
AFP previously debunked a similar false claim that circulated after Imamoglu's arrest here.