The story
This week, Arabic news outlets were reveling in a nefarious photo featuring 35-year-old Necmettin Bilal Erdoğan, the third eldest son of Turkish President Tayyip Recap Erdogan.
The image alledly showed the president's son rubbing shoulders with bearded Daesh commanders, and news spread fast along Iranian and Russian outlets—regulars in a propoganda war between Syria's increasingly international players.
This meeting, conveniently photographed, was proof of Turkey's collusion with the militant group, the reports said. Here's the photo.
The headline spread to well-known Arabic-language, Iranian publications like Al Alam. But of course, there was a catch.
The Blunder
Turns out, these guys are a little famous, but not for being part of Daesh. They're actually the owners of a well-loved restaurant in Istanbul called Cigeristan, a quaint little kebab and mezze place whose patrons on its TripAdvisor page gush over "unique flavors" and salad options.
Here they are inside their restaurant.
And eating with the president's son.
To be fair, this isn't the first time Turkey's been accused of making things easy for Daesh—US and other Western allies have wagged fingers at Ankara's porous border with Syria and inability to crack down on a robust human trafficking network helping to load tens of thousands of refugees on rickety boats in the Aegean Sea.
Still, taking a photo of a couple of bearded guys and calling them Daesh commanders is a little much, even for the proxy-war-turned-propoganda-machine that has been forged between countries that are 'with Assad' and those who are not. After all, sporting long beards is a practice among many pious Muslims. If people have decided that's the criterium for being part of Daesh, things are a lot worse off than we thought.
