In March 2025, online users shared a rumor claiming a video showed thousands of people protesting Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan following the March 19 arrest of his key rival, Ekrem Imamoglu. The clip, captured at night from an elevated position, showed a right-to-left panning shot of many thousands of people walking alongside a long line of slow-moving cars, trucks and buses.
For example, on March 19, an X user posted (archived) the video with the caption, "In Turkey, protests against Erdogan continue unabated." Other users also shared the clip with similar captions.
However, the video did not depict Turkish protests against Erdogan in March 2025, nor was it recorded in 2025. Because of this, the claim is rated as miscaptioned.
The earliest posting (archived) of the miscaptioned video we could find appeared on the Nigerian Catholics Facebook page on Sept. 12, 2024. The post's author described the clip as capturing a scene from Pope Francis' visit that week to the small Southeast Asian country of East Timor, also known as Timor-Leste.
A manager of the Facebook page did not yet return a request via Messenger asking who recorded the clip, as well as inquiring about the exact time and date of the recording.
The Associated Press shared an authentic video recorded in Istanbul on March 20 that depicted "hundreds" of protesters demonstrating against Imamoglu's arrest. The clip's caption also described "thousands of people" as participating in same protests.
Pope Francis' visit to East Timor
Reuters, citing the Vatican, reported an estimated 600,000 people in East Timor gathered on Sept. 10, 2024, to listen to the pope speak:
An estimated 600,000 people in East Timor, just under half its population, turned out in the baking heat on Tuesday for a Mass with Pope Francis at a coastal park synonymous with the country's long struggle for independence from Indonesia.
Filling a wide, dusty area where Indonesian forces buried slain Timorese independence fighters, people arrived as early as 1 a.m. and sat on the ground, many braving the sun for hours in temperatures as high as 32 degrees Celsius (90°F).
Many sheltered under umbrellas decorated in the white and yellow colours of the Vatican flag, while others carried signs asking for blessings and sang local melodies, in one of the largest ever turnouts as a proportion of a country's population for a Mass during a papal visit.
The AP shared a video showing glimpses of the pope's visit to the country.
Video does not show India, either
The same video showing the night scene of thousands of people walking alongside vehicles previously circulated in late September 2024 with false captions about depicting a rally of protesters in Mumbai, India.
The Indian fact-checkers at D-Intent Data debunked (archived) that rumor, writing, "It has nothing to do with India."
For further reading, a previous fact check examined a rumor about a video purportedly showing a 188-year-old Indian man.