Oktay Saral, an adviser to the Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, posted a doctored image on social media that falsely depicted Oya Tekin, the mayor of Seyhan district from the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), in a setting with a photo of the jailed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) leader Abdullah Öcalan at a Peoples’ Equality and Democracy (DEM) Party building. Saral used this to accuse Tekin of collaborating with terrorists.
After being called out, Tekin responded by sharing the original image, which showed no such photo, highlighting the manipulative nature of the accusations. Saral deleted his original post but continued to defend his stance without apologising.
This incident comes as part of a broader post-election smear campaign by pro-government factions, which have targeted the DEM Party and its officials in cities like Mardin (Merdin) and Diyarbakır (Amed) with accusations of disrespecting Turkish national symbols. These claims, frequently amplified through manipulated media such as fake images, led the DEM Party to declare an end to the era of exploiting national symbols for political manipulation. The intensity of this campaign escalated with threats from President Erdoğan’s far-right ally, Devlet Bahçeli, who advocated for harsh measures including the closure of the DEM Party, a stance that Erdoğan later echoed, framing it as a matter of “national betrayal.”
The latest incident of disseminating a clearly doctored image was quickly picked up by pro-government media, which spread the manipulated image further, intensifying the narrative of a CHP-PKK collaboration.
Media watchdog Faruk Bildirici criticised the journalistic integrity of the pro-government outlets that disseminated the doctored image, emphasising that simply deleting the image is insufficient and that an apology was necessary.
The incident coincides with introduction of a “disinformation law” in Turkey, which penalises the spread of false or misleading information with up to three years in jail, highlighting a significant contradiction in the actions of government affiliates versus the law’s intent. However, the law has mostly been used to suppress the opposition and silence critics, effectively becoming a Sword of Damocles in the hands of the Turkish government.
Despite the exposure of the image as a fabrication, neither Saral nor the media outlets involved issued formal apologies or retractions, which points to a continuing strategy of using disinformation for political gains.
