During a mass rally in İstanbul on Sunday, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan showed his supporters a fake video linking the opposition candidate Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu to the Kurdistan Worker’s Party (PKK).
At the start of his speech at the rally at İstanbul’s now closed Atatürk airport, Erdoğan claimed that according to official figures his Justice and Development Party (AKP) had attracted a crowd of 1.7 million.
Erdoğan accompanied his long speech with several videos showcasing his party’s achievements in the past 21 years, and its future projects.
As he was winding up his address to his voters, Erdoğan showed a compilation of pieces of footage aimed at attacking the opposition.
The footage ended with the election campaign video of presidential candidate Kılıçdaroğlu, but with added footage featuring the PKK’s acting leader Murat Karayılan and other members of the Kurdish group, as if they were a part of Kılıçdaroğlu’s campaign.
“Would my national and local citizens vote for these people?” Erdoğan said, as that part of the video was being shown.
The footage, showing Karayılan clapping hands and chanting “Come on Turkey”, produced using deep fake techniques and added to the end of Kılıçdaroğlu’s campaign video, has been circulating on Turkish social media for a couple of weeks.
The use of this deep fake video on the campaign trail is Erdoğan’s latest attempt to attack Kılıçdaroğlu over the support the his opponent is receiving from the country’s pro-Kurdish People’s Democratic Party (HDP).
Statements of PKK leaders calling on Kurdish voters to put an end to the ruling AKP government supported by the far-right Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) on May 14 have been used repeatedly as ammunition in the propaganda war being waged by Turkey’s pro-government media.
