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Despite Protests, Turkey Vows to Push Ahead With Plans for Square Angry Protests Grow in Turkey as Police Continue Crackdown
(about 4 hours later)
ISTANBUL — Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey called for an immediate end on Saturday to the fiercest antigovernment demonstrations in years, as protesters clashed with riot police in here for a second day. ISTANBUL — Violent protests against the government of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan engulfed this city on Saturday, as thousands of demonstrators took to the streets and alleyways in a second day of civil unrest and faced the tear gas and water cannons of a harsh police crackdown.
Mr. Erdogan vowed to push ahead with the redevelopment of a park in Taksim Square in Istanbul, the city’s equivalent of Tahrir Square in Cairo, with a replica Ottoman-era army barracks that would house a shopping mall. Mr. Erdogan, in a televised speech Saturday morning, vowed to go forward with a plan to remake a city park in Taksim Square into a replica Ottoman-era army barracks and mall, the move that set off the initial protests earlier in the week.
Police officers fired tear gas and water cannons to prevent crowds of protesters chanting “unite against fascism” and “government resign” from reaching Taksim, where hundreds were injured in clashes on Friday. For many demonstrators, however, the protest has moved beyond that project and become a broad rebuke to the 10-year leadership of Mr. Erdogan and his Islamist-rooted Justice and Development Party, which the protesters say has adopted authoritarian tactics.
Protesters also clashed with the police in the Besiktas neighborhood after walking across a road bridge over the Bosporus in another apparent effort to reach the square. Mr. Erdogan, in his first comments on the growing unrest, seemed determined to maintain the aggressive police response to the demonstrations. His only conciliatory note was to promise to investigate claims of excessive police force against peaceful protesters on Friday that resulted in nearly 1,000 injuries, according to the Turkish Doctors Association.
“Every four years we hold elections and this nation makes its choice,” Mr. Erdogan said in a speech broadcast on television. “The police were here yesterday, they will be there today, and they will be there tomorrow in Taksim,” Mr. Erdogan said.
“Those who have a problem with government’s policies can express their opinions within the framework of law and democracy,” he said “I am asking the protesters to immediately end these actions.” By late afternoon, the police were pulling back from Taksim Square, allowing tens of thousands of protesters to enter and to continue the protest unhindered.
The protest at Taksim’s Gezi Park started late on Monday after trees were torn up under the redevelopment plan, but has widened into a broader demonstration against the prime minister and his Islamist-rooted Justice and Development Party. The widening chaos here and the images it produces threaten to tarnish Turkey’s image, which Mr. Erdogan has carefully cultivated, as a regional power broker with the ability to shape the outcome of the Arab Spring revolutions by presenting itself as a model for the melding of Islam and democracy.
Emergency medical workers said close to 1,000 people were injured in the clashes in Istanbul on Friday. Half a dozen lost eyes after being hit by gas canisters, the Turkish Doctors’ Association said. Now Turkey is facing its own civil unrest, and the protesters have presented a long list of grievances against Mr. Erdogan and his government, including opposition to its policies of supporting Syria’s rebels against the government of President Bashar al-Assad, its crackdown on dissent and its intimidation of the news media.
The United States State Department said it was concerned by the number of injuries, while Amnesty International and the European Parliament raised concern about excessive use of police force. Interior Minister Muammer Guler said accusations that police officers had used disproportionate force would be investigated. “He criticized Assad, but he’s the same,” said Murat Uludag, 32, who stood off to the side as protesters battled with police officers down an alleyway near the Pera Museum. “He’s crazy. No one knows what he’s doing or thinking. He’s completely crazy. Whatever he says today, he will say something different tomorrow.”
Protests erupted in the capital, Ankara, and the Aegean coastal city of Izmir late on Friday and there were calls on social media for similar demonstrations in more than a dozen cities on Saturday. Many of the protesters, some of whom voted for Mr. Erdogan, said they had grown tired of his leadership, which they said had become increasingly dictatorial. Mr. Erdogan still maintains a strong power base among religious conservatives, who represent a large voting bloc.
“When he first came to power he was a good persuader and a good speaker,” said Serder Cilik, 32, who was sitting at a tea shop watching the chaos unfold. Mr. Cilik said he had voted for Mr. Erdogan in the past but would never do so again.
An older man standing nearby, overhearing the conversation, yelled, “Dictator!”
Mr. Cilik, who is unemployed, continued: “He brainwashed people with religion, and that’s how he got the votes. He fooled us. He’s a liar and a dictator.”
Protests that began days earlier as a peaceful sit-in against the demolition of a central park have widened to neighborhoods across Istanbul and to other cities around the country, including Ankara, the capital. The protests turned violent on Saturday as police forces tried to disperse people with tear gas and some protesters pelted them with rocks, calling them “murderers” and “fascists.”
Police helicopters flew low over Istiklal Street, a main pedestrian thoroughfare, which would normally be clogged with tourists but on Saturday resembled a war zone, with shops shuttered and antigovernment graffiti sprayed on some shop windows. Using the Turkish initials of Mr. Erdogan’s party, one message on the facade of a department store, in blue spray paint, read, “A.K.P. to the grave, the people to reign.”
As they winced and rubbed their eyes of tear gas, protesters wagged their middle fingers at the helicopters and chanted that the government should step down.
On streets running off Istiklal, young men tore up granite slabs from the sidewalk and bashed them against the road, picking up the splintered pieces to throw at the police. On some streets protesters set up makeshift barricades with trash cans, panels of wallboard from construction sites and potted plants taken from outside fancy hotels.
On another major boulevard, protesters stopped a municipal water truck, which they believed was on its way to refill the police water cannons, and opened its valves, flooding the street. Nearby, protesters marched past the headquarters of the state television network, T.R.T., shouting, “Burn the state media!”
Many of the protesters complained about the lack of coverage on Turkish television, and said the silence of much of the local news media would help the protest movement grow because people, unable to see events on television would want to see them for themselves. Some newspapers also were largely silent on the protests: on Saturday morning the lead story in Sabah, a major pro-government newspaper, was about Mr. Erdogan promoting a campaign against smoking.
His party has accused opposition parties of stoking the protests, and in the late afternoon, Mr. Erdogan weighed in on Twitter: “Their issue is, how can we hit the A.K.P.? Wherever they try to hit us, we will stand tall and strong.”