Clashes continue across Turkey
Riot police cordoned off streets, set up roadblocks and fired tear gas and water cannon to stop anti-government protesters reaching Istanbul’s central Taksim Square yesterday, as Turkey’s prime minister addressed hundreds of thousands of supporters a few miles away.
The contrasting scenes pointed to an increasing polarisation in Turkish society - one which critics say Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has fuelled with the fiery rhetoric he has maintained since they began more than two weeks ago.
A police crackdown on Saturday evening that ended an 18-day peaceful sit-in at Taksim Square’s Gezi Park sparked daylong unrest on the streets of Istanbul, while police also broke up demonstrations in the capital, Ankara, and the southern city of Adana.
The protests began in Gezi Park more than two weeks ago and spread to dozens of cities across the country.
Mr Erdogan has blamed them on a plot to destabilise his government. Five people, including a policeman, have died and more than 5,000 have been injured, according to a Turkish rights group.
Elected to his third term just two years ago with 50% of the vote and having steered his country to healthy economic growth, the protests are unlikely to prove an immediate threat to his government.
But they have dented his international image and exposed growing divisions within Turkish society.
Never before in his 10-year tenure has Mr Erdogan faced such an open or broad expression of discontent.
Critics have accused him of an increasingly autocratic way of governing and of trying to impose his conservative Muslim views on the lifestyles of the entire population in a country governed by secular laws – charges he vehemently denies.
Mr Erdogan defended his decision to send police in to end the occupation of the park, where protesters had set up a tent city complete with a library, food distribution centre, infirmary, children’s activity area and plant nursery.
Water cannon and tear gas forced thousands to flee, and clean-up crews ripped down the tents and food overnight.
“I did my duty as prime minister,” he told his supporters. “Otherwise there would be no point in my being in office.”
Six miles away in the centre of the city, police fired tear gas, water cannon and rubber bullets to disperse thousands of protesters trying to converge on Taksim Square.
In some areas, protesters set up barricades across streets while youths threw stones at police.
In others, police broke up demonstrations with dense clouds of stinging tear gas that sent protesters fleeing into side streets.
Similar scenes developed in Ankara, where around 50 demonstrators were injured, including a 20-year-old woman who was in critical condition after being hit in the back of her head with a tear gas canister, according to Selcuk Atalay, secretary-general of the Ankara Medical Association.
In the southern city of Adana, police clashed with stone-throwing demonstrators, the state-run Anadolu Agency said. A fight broke also broke out between the demonstrators, with one group trying to prevent the other from throwing stones at police.
Anadolu said a total of 105 people were detained in Ankara, including a Russian and an Iranian.
Amnesty International said more than 100 people were believed to have been detained during Saturday’s demonstrations in Taksim and nearby districts, and said police were refusing to give details of their whereabouts.
Unions called for a one-day strike that would include doctors, lawyers, engineers and civil servants in support of the protesters. Strikes, however, often have little visible impact on daily life in Turkey.
