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Police Storm Turkish Park Occupied by Protesters Police Storm Turkish Park Occupied by Protesters
(about 5 hours later)
ISTANBUL — After 18 days of antigovernment protests that presented a broad rebuke the leadership of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, riot police stormed Gezi Park on Saturday evening, shortly after Mr. Erdogan warned in a speech that the park would be cleared by Sunday. ISTANBUL — After 18 days of antigovernment demonstrations that presented a broad rebuke to the country’s leadership, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan ordered his riot police to storm the center of the protest movement in Gezi Park on Saturday evening, setting off a night of chaos in downtown Istanbul.
In finally launching the raid to clear the park, in which police fired tear gas and water cannons against protesters who had set up a tent city there, Mr. Erdogan risked hardening the stance of his opponents and exacerbating the crisis. The raid came as protesters were continuing to weigh a compromise offer from Mr. Erdogan to save the park, though many had already rejected the overture and vowed to stay on. As protesters fled the tear gas and water cannons, the police pursued them, in one case into a luxury hotel near the park where medics tended to people injured in the onslaught. Within hours, thousands of people began streaming downtown to protest the crackdown, setting bonfires on the city’s main boulevard as tear gas wafted throughout streets normally bustling on a Saturday night.
In a late-night meeting with organizers that ended Friday morning, Mr. Erdogan had agreed to allow a legal challenge to a government plan to demolish the park to run its course before going forward with construction. And he said that even if the court ruled in the government’s favor, he would submit the matter to a referendum. Although it was difficult to know how many had been hurt in the mayhem — the worst since the protests began — some people sprawled on the floor of a makeshift clinic in a hotel ballroom complained of burns from the chemicals in the streams of water shot from the water cannons.
On Friday, a nonviolent end to the standoff had briefly appeared possible. Taksim Solidarity, an umbrella group of protest organizers, was impressed enough by Mr. Erdogan’s gesture — delivered to them at his home — that it tried to persuade protesters to clear the park. The crackdown came just a day after it appeared Mr. Erdogan may have outflanked the protesters, whose complaints over the planned destruction of Gezi Park for an Ottoman-era-themed shopping mall grew into broader anger and nationwide protests over what critics call Mr. Erdogan’s authoritarian style after the first police attack in the park.
But the rank-and-file protesters vehemently disagreed, and on Saturday, Taksim Solidarity appeared to back off somewhat, issuing a statement that the protest movement “continued to guard the park and the city for all the living beings in them, our trees, living spaces, private lives, liberties and future.” Facing the gravest political crisis in more than 10 years in power, Mr. Erdogan was initially defiant, but late last week attempted to halt the broader movement against him by offering a compromise on the razing of the park that included letting the courts decide. He won over the protest organizers, but they struggled to bring along the rank-and-file demonstrators, who vowed to stay put.
The statement also said the environmentalist resistance that encompasses “citizens’ anger that accumulated over 11 years of A.K.P. government would continue and spread over all portions of life, city and country,” referring to the Turkish initials for Mr. Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party. Then, even as the organizers continued to try to work for a peaceful solution, Mr. Erdogan appeared to lose patience, sending in the police.
Despite Taksim Solidarity’s latest statement, however, it was still trying Saturday to see if it could reach a compromise with the rank-and-file protesters, suggesting they keep one tent in the park as a symbolic move to maintain the protest until the future of the park is determined. It is unclear how the latest crackdown will play out in the wider population, given that Mr. Erdogan — who remains popular in many parts of the country — had offered a compromise before the crackdown. But the brutality of the police assault already appeared to harden the resolve of the protesters.
In a speech to supporters in Ankara on Saturday, Mr. Erdogan said the park would be cleared one way or another by Sunday. If the protesters did not leave the park on their own, he warned, the “security forces of this country knows how to clear it.” “We will keep coming back,” said Tulay Bardak, 52, who had fled the park on Saturday night. “We will resist. It’s us against them. No amount of gas can keep us out of the park.”
The rally by his backers, to be followed by another in Istanbul on Sunday, is being viewed as a counterdemonstration to show that he is still extremely popular in much of the country. As violence engulfed the center of this city, and the injured were being taken to hospitals, Istanbul’s mayor, Huseyin Mutlu, said on television, “Police will go easy on the protesters.”
Mr. Erdogan’s proposed compromise also received public support from Turkey’s president, Abdullah Gul, who was more conciliatory to the protesters last week. Hours before the raid, Mr. Gul urged them to end their action, saying on Twitter that “everyone should now return home.” He criticized the foreign media for “giving false information about Taksim,” and said, “we should be a loving society, not a clashing one.” Several private television stations, meanwhile, appeared to back off their coverage as the protests intensified.Mr. Mutlu later said the crackdown in the park had lasted only a short time and “did not cause any problems.
“Open channels for meetings and dialogue is a sign of democratic maturity,” Mr. Gul wrote. “I believe this period will produce good results.” “This is not an intervention, it’s an evacuation,” he said.
Government officials continued their criticism of the protests as an internationally backed plot by interest groups and an effort by the main opposition party to hurt the government. One of the protesters who was in the park at the time of the raid, who only gave his first name, Deniz, said, “They fired sound bombs first, and then the tear gas came, and we were caught totally off guard. It was as if they were trying to kill us, not evacuate the park..”
“If the issue is about the environmental concerns, respect to the green, all of these messages have been taken, necessary assessments have been made,” Huseyin Celik, a government spokesman, said Saturday in a televised statement. “Prolonging this any longer just spoils it.” The luxury Divan Hotel, on the edge of Gezi Park, became a refuge for protesters fleeing the violence. Hundreds of protesters, wearing hard hats and gas masks, filled the lobby, where glass cases of cufflinks and silk handkerchiefs were smeared with milk that the injured used to clear their eyes of tear gas. As some kept up their anti-Erdogan chants in the lobby, ambulances arrived and medical workers shuttled in with oxygen tanks and other medical supplies.
“Does anyone have any burn cream?” one man yelled.
One man sat with his shirt off, fanning his burned skin with his socks. “Two days ago he told us to leave, so we were expecting this,” said the man, referring to Mr. Erdogan. “He’s a dictator.”
He added, “when this is all over, I’m going to go back and set up my tent. It’s my park. No amount of gas will change that.”
Selami Yalcinkaya, 42, said, “I have been through the military coup in 1980s, but haven’t seen such a brutality.” Adding that he had voted for Mr. Erdogan’s party, he said, “This is not an issue of trees any more.”
Then, the police outside rushed the lobby, but protesters wedged themselves inside the revolving door and kept them out. A little while later, the police attacked again, and fired tear gas into the hotel, filling the lobby with white smoke and setting off a mad scramble. Many people fled down the stairs into the ballroom. One of the injured dragged in was a journalist, who kept saying, “pigs, pigs, pigs,” in reference to the police.
A little over an hour later, the police tear gassed the lobby again, as one woman clung to her boyfriend, screaming: “Take me away from here! Take me home!”
Mr. Erdogan is supported by roughly half of the population, and the other half is a cross-section of secularists, liberals, urban intellectuals and minorities who are divided in their political views but are increasingly united in being opposed to what they view as Mr. Erdogan and his Islamic allies’ attempts to unilaterally impose his views on the country. Many have been especially upset by his recent campaign to crack down on alcohol consumption and his pursuit of vast urban development projects, which have enriched construction magnates with close ties to the government. In smaller ways, too, he has antagonized many more secular Turks, for example by often telling women they should have at least three children.
“He goes as far as getting in people’s bedrooms, he decides what we should eat and drink and how many kids we should have,” said a woman in the hotel lobby, whose shoulders were burned from being hit by the water cannons.
As the protests in the streets continued into the night, the tent city in Gezi Park was bulldozed. Crumpled tents lay scattered on the ground, amid plates of food that had not been finished when the police arrived.

Sebnem Arsu contributed reporting.

Sebnem Arsu contributed reporting.