Accounts on social media circulated a video claiming it was recent and documented the graduation of a new security and police course in the city of Afrin in the Aleppo countryside, accompanied by the raising of the Turkish flag.
The fact-checking team verified the claim by breaking the video into still frames and running a reverse search on them using (Google Lens), and found that the clip documents the graduation of a security forces course in Afrin on 08/12/2023, when the city was under the control of the Syrian National Army under Turkish army supervision.
Why is this claim misleading?
Out of temporal context: An old clip was recirculated and presented as documenting a new event, suggesting to the reader that the raising of the Turkish flag at a security graduation is something happening today, while the scene dates back to an earlier period when the city was under Turkish army supervision.
