ANKARA/ISTANBUL: Police across Turkey yesterday detained dozens of people in an operation linked to three weeks of often violent protests against Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
Overnight in Ankara, riot police used tear gas and water cannon to disperse hundreds of protesters who had gathered in and around the government quarter of Kizilay.
Interior Minister Muammer Guler said 62 people had been detained in Turkey’s biggest city Istanbul and 23 in the capital Ankara. State broadcaster TRT also said a further 13 had been held in Eskisehir. A police source confirmed the operation and said: “For now, only provocateurs will be taken for questioning.”
Protests have frequently turned into fierce clashes between police firing teargas and water cannon and masked demonstrators throwing bottles and other missiles, images that have dented Turkey’s reputation for stability in a volatile Middle East.
Western countries have expressed concern about police treatment of protests against Erdogan, whose authority rests on three successive election victories, the last achieved with 50 percent support.
Critics accuse him of disregarding the half of the population who did not vote for him, some of whom accuse him of conniving to subvert the secular constitution and create an order based on religious principles - something Erdogan denies.
Erdogan has struck a defiant tone throughout the unrest, which poses the greatest public challenge yet to a 10-year rule marked by economic boom and a concerted drive to extend economic and diplomatic influence beyond Turkish frontiers.
“In the face of a comprehensive and systematic movement of violence, the police displayed an unprecedented democratic stance and successfully passed the test of democracy,” he told members of his ruling AK Party in parliament.
“The police have been represented as using violence. Who used violence? All of the terrorists, the anarchists, the rioters,” he said in a speech punctuated by loud applause and cheers.
Erdogan strongly criticised a European Parliament resolution that expressed concern at what it called “the disproportionate and excessive use of force by Turkish police to break up peaceful and legitimate protests”.
The prime minister questioned the European Parliament’s authority to pass a resolution on his country, and said it ignored what’s happening in Greece, the UK, France, and Germany, and instead only focus on a host of “anti-democratic” demonstrations in Turkey, according to Anadolu news agency.
Officials have sought to distinguish between those they considered legitimate protesters and others described variously as “riff-raff” and “terrorists”.
The unrest began as a small action by environmentalists opposed to government plans to build replica Ottoman-era barracks on Gezi Park adjoining Taksim Park, one of the few green spaces in the teeming city of Istanbul. The unrest has eased off since Istanbul saw some of the worst clashes so far over the weekend, following the pattern of the last three weeks when violence flared up at the weekends before calming during the week.
The unrest has left four people dead overall, including one policeman, and about 7,500 injured, according to the Turkish Medical Association. Yesterday, Cem Oezdemir, co-chair of Germany’s opposition Greens party who is of Turkish origin, joined the international chorus of condemnation of Erdogan’s handling of the unrest. “Erdogan will no longer be able to travel the world presenting himself as a reformer and a moderniser,” he said in an interview published in Germany’s Die Welt newspaper. “He won’t be able to shake off the images of brutal violence.”
Reuters
