Claim: A social media video claims that it shows Turkish actor Burak Ozcivit helping victims in the aftermath of the recent earthquake in Turkey.
Fact: The claim is false as the clip is from the Turkish TV drama “Kara Sevda,” which aired from 2015 to 2017 and starred Ozcivit.
On 10 February 2023, a video clip was shared on Facebook with an Urdu caption that, when translated to English, reads, “Turkish famous actor Barak Ozcivit (Osman Ghazi) left the drama set and came to help his people after the earthquake. And there are our actors and TV show hosts who, seeing the country in trouble, go for holidays to other countries.”
Turkey and Syria were hit by two severe earthquakes — measuring 7.8 and 7.5 on the Richter scale — on 6 February 2023, leaving over 40,000 people dead, as of writing time, and flattening hundreds of buildings.
Fact or Fiction?
The video used the name “Osman Ghazi”, referring to the character played by Ozcivit in a famous Turkish season, “Kurulus: Osman”, which was also popular in Pakistan.
The 36-second video clip shows a smoke-covered Ozcivit talking to the media, although the audio is muted and music plays in the background.
Soch Fact Check investigated the claim and conducted a reverse image search on Yandex video keyframes. The results showed that a Pinterest post with a similar image of Ozcivit. The Turkish language description of the image reads, “Watch the last episode of Kara Sevda | Episode summaries, watch new trailer.”
A further search on Google showed a YouTube video uploaded by a verified account named Kara Sevda on 15 October 2015. The video is an episode of the drama, and the false clip corresponds to the video scene at the 9:47 mark.
Although Ocivit and his wife Ferya raised funds for the earthquake victims, the video is not recent or related to the incident.
Virality
The false claim was shared here, here, here, here, and here on Facebook between 8 – 15 February 2023.
On TikTok, the video received around 15k views and can be seen here, here, here, and here.
Conclusion: The video clip of a Turkish actor helping people on an earthquake scene is false. The video is from an old TV serial that aired back in 2015.