Claim: Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan reminisced about Imran Khan while addressing the National Assembly during his February 2025 trip. He said he “wished” that he “could shake hands with” the former prime minister and hoped to “meet Imran Khan” in the future.
Fact: Erdoğan did not make any such remarks; in fact, he never even addressed the National Assembly of Pakistan during his 2025 trip. The audio in the clip is synthetic and likely AI-generated. Moreover, the accompanying video is from his 2020 visit to the country.
On 15 February 2025, Facebook user ‘Sardar Umair Ibrahim PTi’ posted (archive) a video showing Turkish President Erdoğan speaking in the National Assembly (NA) during a visit to the country the same month.
The clip — which also features images of Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif sitting next to Defence Minister Khawaja Asif, as well as a doctored one of former premier Imran Khan behind bars — is accompanied by the following caption:
“ترک صدر اردگان کا عمران خان کو بطور وزیراعظم یاد کرنا اور آج ان کے اسمبلی میں موجود نہ ہونے کا شکوہ کرنا اور عمران خان سے ہاتھ ملانے کی خواہش کا اظہار کرنا حکومت پر ان گنت بجلیاں گرا گیا۔ پی ٹی آئی MNA’s سے زیادہ دلیری سے تو اردگان چھکے چوکے لگا گیا۔😂😂
[Turkish President Erdoğan remembering Imran Khan as the prime minister and complaining about his [Khan’s] absence from the National Assembly today and [expressing] his desire to shake hands with Imran Khan has sent innumerable thunderbolts raining down on the government. Erdoğan bravely took multiple shots as compared to the PTI’s MNAs.😂😂]”
In the video, each of Erdoğan’s remarks in English is followed by a translator speaking in Urdu. The Turkish President says, “Assalam o Alaikum to my brothers and sisters in Pakistan! Pakistan is a country that is very close to Türkiye and I have many memories associated with this nation. The last time I came to Pakistan, I was welcomed by former Prime Minister Imran Khan. And today, Shehbaz Sharif is leading the country as the prime minister. I wished that Imran Khan was also present amongst you all. And I could shake hands with him. I hope that in the future, I can meet Imran Khan.”
Read more: Posts wrongly portray image of Türkiye’s Erdogan with Imran Khan
We corroborated the translation of Erdoğan’s remarks with Dilge Temiz, a freelance writer associated with Turkish fact-checking outlet Teyit, which, like Soch Fact Check, is accredited by the International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN). She said the translation was correct but added that towards the end, the president also says, “Pakistan is my second home.”
Khan, the former PM and founder of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), has been incarcerated since 5 August 2023.
Erdoğan’s 2025 visit to Pakistan
President Erdoğan and First Lady Emine Erdoğan arrived in Pakistan on 13 February 2025 and were welcomed with a full state protocol. A flypast by F-16 fighter jets and a 21-gun salute was carried out to honour the dignitaries. The visit was the last part of his tour to three countries, which included Malaysia as well as Indonesia.
The Turkish leader met his Pakistani counterpart, Asif Ali Zardari, and the military chief General Syed Asim Munir.
The two countries “signed 24 agreements and MoUs to enhance bilateral cooperation” after the Pakistan-Türkiye High-Level Strategic Cooperation Council’s (HLSCC) seventh session in the federal capital, Islamabad.
Erdoğan addressed the Pakistan-Türkiye Business and Investment Forum, saying that Sharif and him had agreed “to continue our efforts to reach the $5 billion trade volume target” between the two countries. An announcement was made to construct “a special economic zone to be developed by Turkish firms”.
Also read: Imran Khan’s picture edited onto 2017 Türkiye protest poster
Erdoğan and Sharif also discussed the Cyprus, Palestine, and the Kashmir issues, countering terrorism, Afghanistan, and the need to reform the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) into a “more representative, democratic, transparent, and accountable” body through a comprehensive process.
The two also signed a joint declaration called, “Deepening, Diversifying, and Institutionalizing the Strategic Partnership,” which “outlines a renewed commitment to strengthen relations between Türkiye and Pakistan”. Among the cooperation agreements were those that covered defence, energy, trade, agriculture, and technology, among others.
Fact or Fiction?
Soch Fact Check reverse-searched the portion of the video in which Erdoğan can be seen speaking and found that it is, in fact, from 14 February 2020 when he addressed a joint session of the Pakistani parliament, as reported by local and international media outlets, a press release by the National Assembly, as well as the second issue of volume 1 of the NA’s newsletter for the period between January to June 2020. This was during the tenure of former PM Imran Khan.
Erdoğan did not make any speech in the National Assembly nor did he address a joint session of the parliament during his trip to Pakistan this month.
The Turkish president did, however, speak publicly at two occasions, including during the Pakistan-Türkiye Business and Investment Forum and at the signing of agreements between the two countries. In the former, the translation, provided by a woman in English, was overlaid simultaneously over his voice. In the latter, a man translated his comments in English after each of his sentences. However, this is unlike the translation provided in Urdu in the viral clip.
Related: Viral photo does not show Erdogan giving orders to Turkish Army chief
When we spoke to Temiz of Teyit, she observed that Erdoğan’s voice sounded “very mechanic (sic) & artificial” and was “very likely” generated using artificial intelligence.
“There is no specific report on Erdoğan talking about Imran Khan during the latest visit. When the reliable reports of the meeting was (sic) examined, it can be seen that Erdoğan mainly talked about strategic partnerships and Pakistan’s support during the earthquakes, about Cypriot Turks and Gaza, etc. So yes, not any report on Erdoğan reminiscing [about] Imran Khan,” she added.
We also spoke to Turkish journalist Hamdi Çelikbaş, who also pointed out that the audio of Erdoğan “was created by artificial AI”. He said that the president “did not make such a speech during his visit to Pakistan”.
Read more: Biden’s threatening letter to Imran Khan is doctored
Soch Fact Check also reached out to the Turkish Embassy in Islamabad and the country’s consulate in Karachi; the former’s “mailbox is full” and the latter did not respond. We also sent emails to Türkiye’s government offices, including its e-Government portal and the Presidency but did not receive a reply.
Erdoğan’s AK Party also did not reply to Soch Fact Check’s request for a comment as “their inbox is full, or it’s getting too much mail right now”.
AI detection tools
Soch Fact Check decided to run the audio through different tools to detect AI-generated content.
The first tool we used is the DeepFake-O-Meter, developed by the University at Buffalo’s Media Forensics Lab (UB MDFL). The three available detectors we chose — namely RawNet3, AASIST, and LFCC-LCNN — revealed that the probability of the audio in question being fake was 96.2%, 93.3%, and 8.8%, respectively. The results are available here, here, and here; however, only those who have signed up can view them.
UB MDFL Director Dr Siwei Lyu, the principal investigator (PI) of the DeepFake-O-Meter and a professor at the university’s Department of Computer Science and Engineering, previously told Soch Fact Check that once a user uploads their sample and selects a detector, “containerised detection algorithms process the sample on the backend” before presenting the results.
Linear Frequency Cepstral Coefficients (LFCC) is a feature that performs voice analysis, while Lightweight Convolutional Neural Network (LCNN) is a machine learning model that acts as a classifier, he said, adding that when combined, they conduct audio deepfake detection.
On the other hand, RawNet3 “is a different classification model based on MFCC [Mel Frequency Cepstrum Coefficient] features”, whereas AASIST, or Audio Anti-Spoofing using Integrated Spectro-Temporal Graph Attention Networks, “is a recent audio deepfake detection method”.
The choice of the three detectors used together by Soch Fact Check “effectively cover a range of audio manipulation types, making them a strong choice”, he had noted at the time.
The second tool, Hive Moderation’s AI-Generated Content Detection, concluded that the audio was 57% likely to be AI-generated.
The third tool we used is Hiya’s Deepfake Voice Detector, which uses AI to verify if an audio clip is authentic; it is also recommended by the Global Investigative Journalism Network. The tool gave an authenticity score of 1/100, stating that the sampled voice is likely a deepfake.
Audio analysis of Erdoğan’s remarks
To further corroborate the AI detection tools’ results, Soch Fact Check consulted Shaur Azher, a lecturer and audio engineer at Soch Videos, our sister company, who specialises in sound design and mixing and mastering audio. He teaches at Karachi University (KU) and Shaheed Zulfikar Ali Bhutto Institute of Science and Technology (SZABIST).
In his analysis, he said the audio “exhibits characteristics suggesting it may be synthetic”. According to his detailed response, he found the following issues:
- The audio exhibits unusually constant frequency patterns, which are atypical of natural human speech. Such uniformity often indicates synthetic generation, as human speech naturally varies in pitch and tone.
- The presence of artificial reverb suggests post-processing, commonly used to blend synthetic audio with authentic recordings. This technique can create a sense of space or environment but may also indicate manipulation.
A spectrogram analysis provided by Shaur Azher
Azher concluded that it was “plausible” that the audio in the viral video “has been manipulated or is synthetic”.
Virality
The primary post we investigated has been viewed over 10,000 times so far. Soch Fact Check also found the claim shared here, here, here, here, here, here, and here on Facebook.
Pakistani journalist Sami Abraham also released a video (archive) claiming that President Erdoğan had expressed a desire to meet Imran Khan during his visit. Titled, “Rajab Tayyab Erdogan Asked Imran Khan| Trump Administration new Appointments | Sami Abraham Latest,” it garnered over 175,000 views on YouTube so far.
The claim was shared by PTI activist Falak Javaid Khan here on X (formerly Twitter), where it was viewed more than 185,900 times. It was also posted here, here, and here, gaining 94,600, 20,700, and 5,600 views, respectively.
Conclusion: Erdoğan did not make any remarks about Imran Khan or reminisce about the PTI founder publicly during his trip to Pakistan in February 2025. In fact, the Turkish president never even addressed the National Assembly during this time around. The audio in the clip is synthetic and likely AI-generated, while the accompanying video is from his visit to the country in 2020.
Background image in cover photo: RTErdogan
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