Claim: The Israeli consulate in Istanbul was attacked and set on fire by protesters after the May 2024 airstrike on Rafah.
Fact: There are no reliable reports about the Israeli consulate in Istanbul being attacked or set on fire during a protest on 27 May 2024. Three Turkish journalists and fact-checkers also asserted that the claim is false. A video circulating in connection with the claim is actually from an October 2023 protest after an explosion at Gaza’s Baptist Hospital. The pictures used in the broadcast news report are from the same clip. Even at that time, a nearby billboard set on fire, not the consulate.
On 28 May 2024, Dawn News broadcast (archive) a video report claiming that protesters had burned down the Israeli consulate in Istanbul, Turkey. The same was also posted on its Facebook page here (archive) and here (archive).
The video itself has also been posted with the same claim on multiple social media platforms.
Rafah attack
A deadly airstrike on Rafah on the night of 26 May 2024 killed 50 people and wounded nearly 250, ABC News reported (archive), citing ActionAid UK, which said it “expects the number of casualties to rise”. The publication added an update (archive) that at least 21 more individuals were “killed in an attack near the International Medical Corps American hospital”.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu termed the civilian deaths in Rafah a “tragic error”, CNN reported (archive). The airstrikes came just days after the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ordered (archive) the Middle Eastern country to stop its actions, including the planned “military offensive”, in the city.
Israel’s airstrikes were condemned by leaders around the world, including French President Emmanuel Macron, Italian Defence Minister Guido Crosetto, Canadian Foreign Minister Mélanie Joly, and the European Union’s (EU) foreign policy head, Josep Borrell (archived here, here, here, and here).
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According to a report (archive) by The Guardian, Rafah is where “more than 85% of the Palestinian territory’s population had sought shelter”. On 28 May, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) said (archive) that in the past three weeks, “more than 1 million have fled Rafah”.
Following the airstrikes, many demonstrations took place globally, including in Turkey, where protesters gathered (archive) at the Barbaros Hayrettin Paşa Mosque before proceeding to the Israeli consulate of Istanbul. While Turkish media outlets reported on the demonstrations here, here, and here (archived here, here, and here), they did not mention any issues of fire or arson during the event; however, Türkiye Newspaper claimed (archive) there were tensions “when some demonstrators attempted to breach police security barriers”.
CNN Türk reported (archive) that there was a brief scuffle among the protesters themselves because some of them wished to enter the building housing the consulate, while others tried to stop them from doing so.
What’s going on in Gaza?
On 7 October 2023, Hamas attacked (archive) a border area of Israel, sparking the ongoing war (archive) in Palestine.
Over 36,200 Palestinians have been killed and more than 82,000 injured, as per an 31 May 2024 update (archive) by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). At least 1,200 Israelis have been killed and upwards of 5,400 injured, while 125 Israeli hostages remain in captivity.
Ever since the 7 October attack, a flood of misleading, old, and out-of-context pictures, videos, and claims have surfaced in the media.
Read more: KFC ad wrongly conflated as mockery of Rafah refugee camp
On 29 December 2023, South Africa invoked (archive) the Genocide Convention — officially the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide — against Israel at the International Court of Justice (ICJ), requesting the Court to indicate provisional measures over the war in the Gaza Strip.
Fact or Fiction?
Soch Fact Check reverse-searched the visuals included in the broadcast news report and found a matching video from last year. On 18 October 2023, protesters did stage a demonstration outside the Israeli consulate in Istanbul, Turkey, “to denounce the #BaptistHospital massacre last night in Gaza”, according to an X post by the Quds News Network (archive).
The visuals shared in the Dawn News report are screenshots from the video in the aforementioned X post.
We matched some keyframes from the video to verify if the viral clip posted on social media in May 2024 is the same as the one that surfaced in October 2023. We also found the image used in the Dawn News YouTube video’s thumbnail in an 18 October 2023 report (archive) published by NPR, which is titled “Photos: Gaza hospital blast sparks outrage across Middle East” and credited to the AP’s photographer in Turkey, Emrah Gurel.
The picture is available on AP Photos here, with the caption, “People shout slogans during a protest to show solidarity with Palestinians outside the Israeli consulate in Istanbul, Turkey, Tuesday, Oct. 17, 2023. (AP Photo/Emrah Gurel)”.
The 17 October 2023 explosion in the Baptist Hospital — also known as the Al-Ahli al-Arab Hospital — killed (archive) hundreds of people, with Palestinian and Israeli officials blaming each other (archive) for the blast.
Subsequently, protests erupted across Turkey, with multiple media outlets (archived here, here, and here) quoting the Istanbul governor’s office as saying (archive) five arrests were made during a demonstration comprising approximately “80,000 people” after a small group tried to enter the building housing the Israeli consulate.
However, while there were no confirmed reports of the Israeli consulate being set on fire back in October 2023, police did use pepper spray and water cannons to disperse the protesters before putting (archive) “iron barriers and armoured vehicles around the building”. Israeli media outlet Haaretz reported (archive) that Istanbul police successfully averted an “attempt to storm the Israeli consulate”.
Soch Fact Check also spoke to Hamdi Çelikbaş, a journalist formerly associated with Anadolu Agency, who said the May 2024 protests in front of the Israeli consulate in Istanbul “started at midnight the day before, following the massacre at the UN camp in Rafah”.
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“There were protests by various non-governmental organisations until yesterday evening [27 May],” Çelikbaş added. However, he confirmed that the protesters did not set fire to the consulate or the area around it.
“The Israeli consulate is located on the seventh floor of a multi-storey plaza. It is not possible for protesters to approach the building where the consulate is located due to intense security measures and barricades,” the journalist told us.
Çelikbaş provided us with links to actual visuals of the 27 May protest posted here, here, and here (archived here, here, and here) on social media. He also clarified that in the October 2023 protest, “the place that was allegedly set on fire was not the consulate building, but a destroyed billboard on the side of the road”.
He also posted on X about the misleading video clips in English and Turkish (archived here and here).
This video is being widely shared tonight, falsely claiming to show "breaking" footage of protesters setting the Israeli consulate in Istanbul on fire.
While the video is genuine, it dates back to a protest outside the Israeli consulate in October 2023, and isn't from tonight.… pic.twitter.com/W1wYJSgifm
— 𝐉𝐨𝐮𝐫𝐧𝐚𝐥𝐢𝐬𝐭 (@HamdiCelikbas) May 27, 2024
We also reached out to Turkish investigative news outlets accredited by the International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN), of which Soch Fact Check is also a signatory.
A team member of one Turkish fact-checking outlet, Doğrula, confirmed that the claim the Israeli consulate in Istanbul was set on fire during the 27 May protest “is not true” and that “no fire or arson happened as claimed”.
“There was no fire or arson on 17 October 2023” either, they said. While “the Israeli Consulate was attacked with stones, sticks, torches, and fireworks during the protests” last year, they added that “there were no fires in both cases”.
We also spoke to a team member at İzlemedeyiz Derneği, which also published their own investigation here on Doğruluk Payı, another IFCN-certified organisation. They said the “most important detail” in verifying the claim “is that the consulate is located on the 7th floor of a multi-story plaza”.
“Since it is not a detached building, it is not possible for the consulate itself to be set on fire,” they added.
The Israeli consulate in Istanbul is indeed located on the seventh floor — “Kat:7 [Floor:7]” — of the building known as Yapı Kredi Plaza, as evidenced by the address provided on its website (archive).
Videos from the 27 May protests did show some “demonstrators throwing fireworks towards the plaza”, which perhaps caused some damage, the İzlemedeyiz Derneği team member noted, but stressed that “there are no reports indicating that they started a fire affecting the building”.
They also clarified that while it was possible that the large crowd could have engaged in such activities, their team “did not find any evidence of this in the circulating videos”.
Lastly, a team member of the IFCN-certified outlet Teyit — which, too, published their own investigation here — informed us that “although some fireworks were thrown at the consulate, there is no evidence that the building was set on fire”.
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In addition, the Teyit article includes a link to coverage (archive) of the October 2023 protests by BBC News Türkçe (BBC Turkey), which has an image that corresponds to a keyframe from the viral video claimed to be from the 27 May 2024 protest. The photo is credited to and available on Getty Images here (archive).
That the billboard was set on fire, not the Israeli consulate, during the October 2023 protest was also confirmed by members of both the İzlemedeyiz Derneği and Doğrula teams.
Soch Fact Check, therefore, finds the claim that the Israeli consulate in Istanbul was attacked and set on fire on 27 May to be false. The visuals included in various news reports and social media posts are actually from a video of an October 2023 protest outside the Israeli consulate in Istanbul.
Virality
The Facebook posts by Dawn News were viewed over 11,000 and 24,000 times, as of writing time. The outlet also posted the same on its YouTube page (archive), where it raked in over 26,000 views. Other Pakistani websites that shared the claim were Shia News and News 360.
In India, Times of India posted the false claim with the old video on its website, Facebook, and YouTube page here, here, and here, respectively.
In Iran, Mehr News Agency, Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA), Pars Today, Sahar Urdu, and ABNA News Agency shared the claim here, here, here, here, and here.
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MTV Lebanon and Eurasia Media Network published the claim here and here, respectively. Abu Ali Express, an Israeli news and commentary channel, also posted it here.
Soch Fact Check found the false claim here, here, here, here, and here on Facebook, here, here, here, and here on X (formerly Twitter), here and here on Instagram, and here on Threads.
Two of the most viral Facebook Reels with the false claim — here and here — were viewed over one million and 12,000 times.
Conclusion: There are no reliable reports about the Israeli consulate in Istanbul being attacked or set on fire during a protest on 27 May 2024. Three Turkish journalists and fact-checkers also asserted that the claim is false. A video circulating in connection with the claim is actually from an October 2023 protest after an explosion at Gaza’s Baptist Hospital. The pictures used in the broadcast news report are from the same clip. Even at that time, a nearby billboard set on fire, not the consulate.
Background image in cover photo: Imad Alassiry
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