Image of defunct NSA spy station in Berlin is passed off as a Mosque in Turkey - FACTLY
Sai Krishna Muthyanolla
September 21, 2021
A social media post accompanying an image of a dome-like structure is being shared widely with a claim that the structure represents a Mosque in Turkey.  Let’s fact-check the veracity of the claim made in the post.
Claim: Image of a Mosque in Turkey.
Fact: The image is actually of an NSA spy station in Berlin, which is used to intercept the communications in Russian controlled East Germany till the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 during the cold war era. The image has nothing to do with Turkey. Hence the claim made in the post is FALSE.
The structure is neither a Mosque nor it is in Turkey. Reverse image search of the photo in the post yielded multiple news articles which published the same image. As per these articles, the structure is actually a cold war era NSA (National Security Agency, America) listening station at the Teufelsberg hill in Berlin, which is currently defunct.
As per the DW article, this abandoned listening or intelligence gathering station was once used during the cold war by the Americans and British to intercept the communications in Russian-controlled East Germany till the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. The station was built on Teufelsberg, a manmade hill in the Grunewald forest, Germany.
News articles about this dilapidated spy station which carried images similar to the one in the post can be read here, here, and here. Hence, all these establish that the image is indeed of a spy station in Germany and not of a Mosque in Turkey.
To sum it up, the image of a defunct NSA spy station in Berlin is passed off as a Mosque in Turkey.