Turkey protests spread after violence in Istanbul

1 June The Guardian

Demonstrations against Erdogan government in several cities as riot officers use tear gas to control protesters in Istanbul.

Turkey has been engulfed by a series of protests across several cities after riot police turned Istanbul's busiest city centre hub into a battleground, deploying tear gas and water cannon against thousands of peaceful demonstrators.In one of the biggest challenges to the 10-year rule of the prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, demonstrators took to the streets of Ankara, Izmir, Bodrum and several other cities as well as Istanbul to vent their frustration at what is seen to be an increasingly authoritarian administration.

The air of government nervousness was reinforced by the relative lack of mainstream media coverage of the drama in central Istanbul, fuelling speculation that the Erdogan government was leaning on the main television stations to impose a blackout on the ugly scenes.Following several days of dawn police raids on the protesters seeking to occupy Gezi park on Taksim Square in Istanbul city centre, the clashes escalated violently, leaving more than 100 people injured, several of them seriously.

Police went on the rampage against protesters who had been sitting reading books and singing songs.There was widespread criticism of the heavy-handed intervention and of the government, which is committed to demolishing the park to erect a shopping centre.The US state department said: “We certainly support universally peaceful protests, as we would in this case.

” In Brussels, MEPs called on the EU to act.What started at the beginning of the week as an environmental protest aimed at saving an Istanbul city centre park from shopping centre developers backed by the government appeared to be snowballing into a national display of anger at the perceived high-handedness of the Erdogan government.“They have declared war on us,” said an Istanbul shopkeeper in a back street, as he handed out lemon juice to counter the teargas to protesters.

“This is out of all proportion.Today is a turning point for the AKP,” said Koray Caliskan, a political scientist at Istanbul's Bosphorus University. “Erdogan is a very confident and very authoritarian politician, and he doesn't listen to anyone anymore.

But he needs to understand that Turkey is no kingdom, and that he cannot rule Istanbul from Ankara all by himself.

Ugur Tanyeli, an architecture historian, said: “The real problem is not Taksim, and not the park, but the lack of any form of democratic decision-making process and the utter lack of consensus. We now have a PM who does whatever he wants.”

The protests started late on Monday after developers tore up trees to make way for the controversial construction project featuring a shopping centre in nostalgic Ottoman style and building a replica of an old military barracks.