Video does not show last moments of Turkish family during earthquake

Dozens of Facebook and other social media users have uploaded a video claiming to show the final moments of a Turkish family who allegedly died during the 6 February earthquake. 

This is false. The video was filmed in 2020.

The video, which on some posts has been viewed hundreds of thousands of times, shows a man, woman and two young children in a room which appears to be shaking and debris falling from the ceiling. As the family members crouch in the centre of the room, more debris falls eventually completely obscuring the view of the camera. 

A caption alongside the video reads: “The last minutes of the Turkish family's life were caught on video. An online camera was installed to monitor the nanny.” Some versions of the post omit the information about the camera. 

Some of those commenting on the posts have questioned its authenticity. Many note that the earthquake occurred soon after 4am local time, meaning it would have been dark outside whereas the video has clearly been filmed during daylight. 

In addition, though debris appears to be falling from the ceiling throughout the video, the clothes of the family members appear to remain unmarked. 

Original footage

Full Fact has traced the video back to the TikTok account named ‘Çılgın_family’ which began uploading videos to the social media platform in 2019. 

The video in question was uploaded on 27 January 2020, shortly after a real earthquake affected eastern Turkey on 24 January.

The video appears to be fabricated, using special effects. It was reposted on 3 November 2020, following another earthquake, this time affecting western Turkey, on 30 October.  

The majority of the reposted videos we have seen carry a watermark of avia.pro, a website which describes itself as “a federal news agency that distributes news from Russia and the near abroad”. The organisation seems to have been among the first to share the footage and its tweet has been viewed hundreds of thousands of times.

We have contacted the company to inform them of our findings and will update this article if we receive a response. 

This is one of a number of videos we’ve seen falsely claiming to show the major earthquake affecting Turkey and Syria.

Such images and videos are often shared in good faith on social media in the wake of a major news event or crisis, so it’s a good idea to check something before you post it. You can read more about how to tell whether a video is reliable in our guide.