In a video that fills me with wonder at being alive in 2025, someone in an inflatable Pikachu costume was seen loping down the street in Turkey alongside anti-Erdoğan protesters fleeing from the cops.
Pikachu was spotted amongst anti-Erdoğan protesters fleeing from police in Antalya, Turkey last night.
— Adam Schwarz (@adamjschwarz.bsky.social) 2025-03-27T14:36:22.725Z
The protests—reportedly the largest mass movements in the region in decades—started last week, after Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu was arrested for alleged corruption. Ekrem is the main rival to the country's President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who has attacked LGBTQ+ and women’s rights and democracy, and critics say is leading the country into authoritarianism and autocracy.
Early Thursday morning, as students tried to issue a statement outside of the Middle East Technical University in Ankara, security forces launched pepper spray, water cannons and plastic pellets at the demonstrators and arrested nearly 1,900.
People are protesting in several major cities in Turkey, and Pikachu was at one in Antalya, according to local news outlets and social media. In the video, the person in the mascot suit hauls yellow nylon ass as fast as a pair of short, inflated legs can carry them—which is surprisingly fast, actually, considering how they’re keeping up with the people running all around them. The original video was captured by Ismail Koçeroğlu, a photojournalist at Akdeniz University in Antalya.
On Instagram, Koçeroğlu posted another photo of Pikachu posing with protestors and security.
And because nothing good is safe from AI—not even Protest Pikachu, arguably one of the purest pieces of iconography to come out of the resistance to the worldwide creep of authoritarianism yet—an AI-generated image of Pikachu rushing through the streets alongside protestors went viral shortly after Koçeroğlu’s video. Several local outlets have debunked the image, which is made to look like a high-resolution photojournalism shot from the ground, as being generated with AI.
The AI image of Pikachu has gone nearly as viral as the real video of the person in a Pikachu costume running away from the cops, and shows how people looking to take advantage of any widely covered news event are creating AI imagery in near real time with the event itself. 404 Media saw various people sharing the AI image of Pikachu as though it were real, and on first glance it was difficult for us to tell that it was fake, especially because the real video of Pikachu running away is blurry. But, as several news outlets in Turkey have already pointed out, things like mixed-up lettering on the police jackets, distorted details, and inconsistencies in the street lamps give it away as fake.
Pikachu amidst the ongoing protests in Turkey. This is real by the way. pic.twitter.com/gDdrWJGNlt
— Jake Hanrahan (@Jake_Hanrahan) March 27, 2025
Pikachu has always been for the people, showing up at rallies and protests around the world.
Today is Chile's Constitutional Convention election, voters across the country will select delegates to write a new constitution.
— Populism Updates (@PopulismUpdates) May 16, 2021
No idea about her chances but godspeed to candidate Giovanna Grandon, AKA Tía Pikachu, famous for dancing at protests in a giant Pikachu costume pic.twitter.com/CjIjda46O7
Erdoğan recently called the demonstrations "street terrorism,” which technically makes Pikachu a terrorist in the eyes of the president of Turkey. In the midst of widespread turmoil, President Donald Trump praised Erdoğan, calling him a “good leader.”
Protest Pikachu isn’t the first to show up to an anti-Erdoğan protest in an inflatable suit: A young woman came to a protest earlier this week in a dinosaur costume.
