New Teargas Crackdown on Anti-government Protesters in Turkey 31st May

Turk­ish police fired tear gas and water can­non on Fri­day at pro­test­ers occu­py­ing a park in cen­tral Istan­bul, injur­ing scores in the lat­est vio­lent crack­down on anti-gov­ern­ment demon­stra­tions.

The protest at Gezi Park start­ed late on Mon­day after devel­op­ers tore up trees but has widened into a broad­er demon­stra­tion against Prime Min­is­ter Tayyip Erdogan’s Islamist-root­ed Jus­tice and Devel­op­ment Par­ty (AKP).

Riot police recent­ly clashed with tens of thou­sands of May Day pro­test­ers in Istan­bul. There have also been protests against the government’s stance on the con­flict in neigh­bor­ing Syr­ia, a recent tight­en­ing of restric­tions on alco­hol sales and warn­ings against pub­lic dis­plays of affec­tion.

Police staged a dawn raid on demon­stra­tors who had been camp­ing for days in Gezi Park in anger at plans to build a shop­ping mall, and clouds of tear gas rose around the area in Tak­sim Square that has long been a venue for polit­i­cal protest.

“We do not have a gov­ern­ment, we have Tayyip Erdogan…Even AK Par­ty sup­port­ers are say­ing they have lost their mind, they are not lis­ten­ing to us,” said Koray Caliskan, a polit­i­cal sci­en­tist at Bospho­rus Uni­ver­si­ty who attend­ed the protest. “This is the begin­ning of a sum­mer of dis­con­tent.”

The Istan­bul Med­ical Cham­ber, a doc­tors’ asso­ci­a­tion, said at least 100 peo­ple sus­tained minor injuries on Fri­day, some of them when a wall they were climb­ing col­lapsed as they tried to flee clouds of tear gas.

Amnesty Inter­na­tion­al said it was con­cerned by what it described as “the use of exces­sive force” by the police against what had start­ed out as a peace­ful protest.

Erdo­gan has over­seen a trans­for­ma­tion in Turkey dur­ing his decade in pow­er, turn­ing its econ­o­my from cri­sis-prone into Europe’s fastest-grow­ing. Per capi­ta income has tripled in nom­i­nal terms since his par­ty rose to pow­er.

He remains by far Turkey’s most pop­u­lar politi­cian, and is wide­ly viewed as its most pow­er­ful leader since Mustafa Kemal Ataturk found­ed the mod­ern sec­u­lar repub­lic on the ash­es of the Ottoman Empire 90 years ago.

The unrest has been far from the sort of mass demon­stra­tions seen in oth­er parts of the Mid­dle East or even parts of Europe in recent years, but it reflects grow­ing oppo­si­tion con­cern about Erdogan’s author­i­tar­i­an­ism.

DEFIANCE

Hun­dreds of mil­i­tary offi­cers have been jailed on charges of plot­ting a coup against Erdo­gan in recent years; oth­ers includ­ing aca­d­e­mics, jour­nal­ists and politi­cians face tri­al on sim­i­lar accu­sa­tions.

Erdo­gan has made no secret of his ambi­tion to run for the pres­i­den­cy in elec­tions next year when his term as prime min­is­ter ends, exac­er­bat­ing oppo­si­tion con­cerns.

“These peo­ple will not bow down to you” read one ban­ner at the Gezi Park protest, along­side a car­toon of Erdo­gan wear­ing an Ottoman emperor’s tur­ban.

Post­ings on social media includ­ing Twit­ter, where “Occu­py Gezi” – a ref­er­ence to protests in New York and Lon­don last year – was a top-trend­ing hash­tag, and Face­book said sim­i­lar demon­stra­tions were planned for the next few days in oth­er Turk­ish cities includ­ing Ankara, Izmir, Adana and Bur­sa.

“Kiss protests” – in which demon­stra­tors are urged to lock lips – had already been planned for Istan­bul and Ankara this week­end after sub­way offi­cials were report­ed to have admon­ished a cou­ple for kiss­ing in pub­lic a week ago.

Erdo­gan is push­ing ahead with a slew of mul­ti-bil­lion dol­lar projects which he sees as embody­ing Turkey’s emer­gence as a major pow­er. They include a ship­ping canal designed to rival Pana­ma or Suez, a giant mosque and a third Istan­bul air­port billed to be one of the world’s biggest.

Speak­ing just a few miles from Gezi Park at the launch on Wednes­day of con­struc­tion of a third bridge link­ing Istanbul’s Euro­pean and Asian shores, Erdo­gan vowed to pur­sue plans to rede­vel­op Tak­sim Square.

Archi­tects, left­ist polit­i­cal par­ties, aca­d­e­mics, city plan­ners and oth­ers have long opposed the plans, say­ing they lacked con­sul­ta­tion with civic groups and would remove one of cen­tral Istanbul’s few green spaces.