Tim Arango June 3, 2013
Turkish Prime Minister Tayip Erdogan characterises the two days of anti-government demonstrations as 'provocations', as Turkey begins to assess the damage.
Violent protests against the government of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan engulfed Istanbul, Turkey's largest city, on Saturday and spread to other cities, including the capital, Ankara, as tens of thousands of demonstrators took to the streets in a second day of civil unrest and faced the tear-gas and water cannon of a harsh police crackdown.
By late afternoon, the police withdrew from Istanbul's central Taksim Square, allowing the demonstrators to gather unimpeded in the place that set off the protests last week with government plans to turn a park into a replica Ottoman-era army barracks and mall.
The departure of the police, who had been widely criticised for violent tactics on Friday, set off scenes of jubilation and destruction, as some drank and partied while others destroyed police vehicles and bulldozers.
Streets of fire: an injured man is helped away from clashes between protesters and police near the Prime Minister's office in Istanbul. Photo: AP
While the protest began over plans to destroy a park, for many demonstrators it had moved beyond that to become a broad rebuke to the 10-year leadership of Mr Erdogan and his government, which they say has adopted authoritarian tactics.
Some saw the police pull-back as a historic victory. ''It's the first time in Turkey's democratic history that an unplanned, peaceful protest movement succeeded in changing the government's approach and policy,'' said Sinan Ulgen, chairman of the Centre for Economic and Foreign Policy Studies.
''It gave, for the first time, a strong sense of empowerment to ordinary citizens to demonstrate and further their belief that if they act like they did the last few days they can influence events in Turkey,'' he said.
Protesters clash: What started as an outcry against a local development project has snowballed into widespread anger against the government's increasingly authoritarian agenda. Photo: AFP
Hundreds of people also demonstrated in New York in a show of support for mass protests. The marchers gathered at Zuccotti Park, near Wall Street, which also became the nerve centre for the Occupy Wall Street movement in late 2011.
Still, it was far from clear on Saturday whether the protesters could capitalise on their success. The Islamist-rooted government retains wide support among religious conservatives, and Mr Erdogan insisted that the redevelopment of the square would continue.
By nightfall, as the crowds in Taksim Square grew rowdier, a sense of foreboding crept in that police would return. In the Besiktas neighbourhood, the police were still firing tear-gas, and protesters were erecting barricades.
The Interior Ministry said it had arrested 939 people at demonstrations across the country, and that 79 were wounded, a number that was probably low. After Friday's protests, which were smaller and less violent than those on Saturday, a Turkish doctors' group reported nearly 1000 injuries.
The scenes carried the symbolic weight of specific grievances: people held beers in the air, a rebuke to the recently passed law banning alcohol in public spaces; young men smashed the windshields of the bulldozers that had begun razing Taksim Square; and a red flag bearing the face of modern Turkey's secular founder, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, was draped over a destroyed police vehicle.
Despite the comparisons with Egypt's revolution, no viable political opposition in Turkey seems capable of seizing the disenchantment of secular-minded Turks to form a cohesive movement.
The widening chaos threatens to tarnish Turkey's image, which Mr Erdogan has cultivated, as a regional power broker shaping the outcome of the Arab Spring revolutions by presenting itself as a model for the melding of Islam and democracy.
New York Times, AP
