A post shared on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, claims to show images of Greek naval ships in the Aegean Sea.
Greece continues to move troops to islands in the Aegean Sea pic.twitter.com/zGq1r4abjx
— Sprinter (@Sprinter99800) October 22, 2023
Verdict: Misleading
The images are from September 2022 and are unrelated to current events.
Fact Check:
Greece’s Migration Minister warned that the European Union could face a new wave of migrants from the Middle East due to the Hamas-Israeli conflict, according to Reuters. Social media users are sharing images of Greek ships and claiming that they are recent. One post reads, “Greece continues to move troops to islands in the Aegean Sea.”
These images, however, predate October 2023. Through a reverse image search, Check Your Fact found that the images are from September 2022 and were posted by Andaolu, a Turkish news agency on X.
Drones capture images of armed vehicles sent by Greece to the Aegean islands with non-military status in violation of international law pic.twitter.com/qNC18NaC0I
— Anadolu English (@anadoluagency) September 25, 2022
Anadolu reported the images were taken by Turkish military drones and that the deployment of the “armed vehicles” was in violation of international law. Greece and Turkey have been disputing over boundaries in the Aegean Sea for decades, with Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu saying in December 2022 that any expansion of Greece’s territorial waters could result in hostilities, according to Politico EU. (RELATED: Hamas Official Falsely Claims Group Did Not Kill Any Civilians)
Greece and Turkey are both part of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) alliance. The two have had tensions over the Aegean Sea in 2022, according to The Associated Press.