Fact Check: Old video from Turkey shared as football fans donating toys for Palestine

Hyderabad: A video of spectators in a football stadium throwing stuffed toys onto the pitch is viral on the Internet, with users claiming that it shows people expressing their support for Palestine.

An X premium user shared the video with the caption, “The Football Ground became a battlefield for the palestinians Thank you all for taking a stand in favor of Palestine. (sic)”

Several other X users shared the video claiming the same. Click here, here, and here to view the posts.

Fact Check

NewsMeter found that the video is from February of this year and shows football fans in Istanbul throwing stuffed toys as a tribute to children affected by the earthquake in Turkey.

Upon a reverse image search of the video’s keyframe, we found it on Instagram, posted by a handle named ‘majaleh.ir’ on February 28. The caption says the toys were meant to be donations to victims of the earthquake in Turkey.

Taking this as a cue, we ran a relevant keyword search and came across a report by Al Jazeera from February 27 titled, ‘Besiktas fans throw toys on pitch for children affected by quake.’

The report said that fans of Istanbul football club Besiktas threw thousands of stuffed toys onto the pitch for children affected by the devastating earthquake which happened on February 6. It also mentioned that the Turkish Super League game was paused for four minutes and 17 seconds for the fans to throw the gifts onto the pitch.

An IANS report by The Quint published on February 27 reported the incident with the same details. It also carried a video post by the official X handle of Besiktas JK, which showed thousands of fans throwing stuffed and plush toys on the pitch as the camera pans through the entire stadium.

Hence, we conclude that the viral video does not show spectators throwing toys on the football pitch in support of Palestinians. The claim is false.