At the turn of March and April 2025, several photographs allegedly taken during rallies that began after the arrest of the mayor of Istanbul went viral on the Internet. They depict people dressed as famous pop culture characters. We have verified the authenticity of these images.
One of the alleged photos shows people running dressed as Spider-Man, Joker and Pikachu with a Turkish flag in their hand. Behind them are police officers with shields, as well as a man in a Batman costume standing on the roof of a car with a flashing light. “The rallies in Turkey look like a crossover that we did not expect, but which we need,” the public post says Marvel/DC: Geek Movies on VKontakte (100,000 views at the time of writing this analysis). Similar publications appeared in other communities, including MyComics | Marvel (118,000 views), "Marvel/DC Universe"(18,000) and "Marvel Universe | DC"(17,000). The photo was widely distributed outside the RuNet — for example, it was published on the social network X by an English-speaking blogger Ian Miles Chong (more than 5 million views).
Two other images also went viral on Russian-language Telegram: one of them shows a man dressed as Pikachu running from the police, and the second shows his arrest. “In Turkey, Batman appeared at a rally against Erdogan, and earlier Pikachu was hiding from the police at a protest,” says the caption to a selection of photos and videos allegedly taken during demonstrations, published on the channel “Live broadcast"(779,000 views). Similar recordings were published in Telegram channels “Rhymes and punches"(151,000 views), Voblya (144,000), "Notepad Russia 18+" (53,000), "From the scene"(51,000), etc. Similar publications can be found on Turkish, French, Spanish, Greek and other languages.
Mass protests in Turkey started March 19, 2025, after detentions and the subsequent arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu. He was accused of corruption and assistance to terrorist organizations; in total, about 100 people were taken into custody as part of the investigation. The politician was considered the main opponent of the current president of the country, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and his most likely rival in the next presidential elections. Despite the ban on demonstrations, protesters took to the streets of Istanbul and other cities, some of them entered clashes with the police, who used special equipment to disperse the rallies. Despite the demands of the demonstrators, Imamoglu suspended from office on March 23. By data BBC, in less than two weeks of rallies, about 2,000 protesters were detained, including several journalists.
A participant in demonstrations in Antalya, dressed in a Pikachu Pokemon costume, became a real Internet hit. Local media published photographs and rollers with this man, many of which were taken by a photojournalist Ismail Koceroglu. One of the recordings shows Pikachu running away from the police with a crowd.
Turkish Pikachu, which became one of the symbols of protest, gave interview German magazine Der Spiegel. From there it became known that under the suit was Hasan Tashkan, he is 21 years old and runs a fairly popular blog about fitness (more than 130,000 subscribers in Instagram). According to the man, he dressed up as Pikachu because he thinks the Pokemon is cute and popular. During the rally, blogger wanted just to make people laugh and defuse the situation, but I didn’t expect his appearance to cause such a stir. Tashkan also stated that he initially decided not to participate in the protests: “I don’t follow politics and have never been interested in it.”
There are many photos and videos on Tashkan’s page where he is dressed in a Pikachu costume, but, as it turned out, not all the pictures and videos distributed on the Internet and allegedly depicting the blogger are genuine.
Photo crossover
Using a reverse image search, Verified found the original source of the viral photo featuring Pikachu, Batman, the Joker and Spider-Man. On March 27, this photo was published by Eren Fazlioglutr (@erenfazlioglutr), his tweet received more than 6 million views. Moreover, on the original image there was a watermark of the author, but in the posts we analyzed it was cut off.
Fazlioglu posted the photo without any captions, but his profile description read: “Specialist in computers and artificial intelligence. All content is created using AI.” Moreover, a few hours later he left replay to the original post, writing in Turkish and English: “I believe that every person has an average level of intelligence. Let me be clear though: the original footage that was covered by the media in Turkey only showed Pikachu running. This version is AI-generated and includes other characters for comic effect."
It is noteworthy that the man in the Batman outfit really participated in the protests, but his costume was different from the version created by the neural network. In addition, he was present at the rally in Istanbul, and not in Antalya, where he “protested” Pikachu. But there is a joint photo of a man in a Pokemon costume with a demonstrator in a Spider-Man mask, it was published on Instagram by photojournalist Koceroglu.
There are several more similar works generated by the neural network on Fazlioglu’s page. Other comic book characters appeared on some of them: Catwoman, Hulk and Iron Man.
It was possible to determine the origin of a viral image without searching for the original source. For example, you can pay attention to some artifacts that reveal the operation of neural networks. For example, on the shield of one of the policemen, instead of the word Polis (“Police”), smeared letters are noticeable, and in the background a strangely shaped lamppost is visible. Finally, the Pokemon costume from the original videos is different from the one shown in this photo. “Verified” also analyzed the image using an AI detector from the company Hive. He estimated the probability that the picture was created by a neural network at 98.2%.
Escape and capture of Pokemon
How found out Turkish fact-checking project Teyit, photo with a running Pokemon with water cannons working behind it, for the first time published user X with username @byLony. His tweet is dated March 27 and does not contain any clarifying captions, while the image shows his watermark, which was cropped out in viral posts. Fact checkers from Teyit and their Greek colleagues from Ellinika Hoaxes checked image using different AI detectors, and they all indicated that there was a high probability that the image was generated by a neural network. Similar result shared Emmanuelle Saliba, company expert GetReal Labs, which deals with protection against manipulation using artificial intelligence. Additionally, 404 Media did a screenshot of the Instagram story of photographer Koceroglu, who published a viral photo with the caption “Remastered by AI.”
Turkish fact checkers also noticed some distortions. For example, on the right side of the photo on the policeman’s uniform and on the police car, instead of the word Polis, smeared letters are again visible. In addition, the lampposts in this case are different in shape from those that were captured in authentic materials with a person in a Pokemon costume.
As for the photo with the Turkish Pikachu in handcuffs, “Verified” was unable to establish its original source. However, we can confidently say that this photo is a fake. Firstly, not a single reputable media outlet reported on the arrest of a man in a Pokemon costume in Turkey, and Tashkan himself did not report this. Secondly, when performing a reverse image search in the Google Lens service, it is indicated that this image was created by artificial intelligence from Google. We also checked the photos using several AI detectors (Was It AI, tools from Sightengine And Hive) - all of them also indicated the operation of a neural network. Finally, typical AI artifacts are again evident. Thus, the word Polis on the shield is written illegibly, on one of the Turkish flags there are three stars instead of one, and the life-size doll does not have a hole in the area of the Pokemon’s mouth, through which the person inside could see the environment around him.
Thus, all three disassembled photographs turned out to be fakes created using neural networks. Although the news itself that a person wearing a Pikachu costume took part in the Turkish protests is true, some Internet users mistake the AI images for real and spread them, rather than numerous genuine photos and videos.
*Russian authorities think Meta Platforms Inc., which owns the social network Instagram, is an extremist organization; its activities and symbols are prohibited in Russia.
Cover photo: @erenfazlioglutr (X) / social networks
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