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After battling for nearly two days with tear gas, water cannons and pepper spray, Turkish police retreated from Istanbul's central Taksim Square on Saturday afternoon, allowing tens of thousands of demonstrators to pour into the space.

A peaceful sit-in on Friday against government plans to demolish a park was met with a police crackdown, igniting the biggest anti-government riots this city has seen in a decade.

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan demanded an end to the violent protests, which have also spread to the capital city of Ankara and the port city of Izmir.

Caught up in the Istanbul riots See massive crowd gather in Istanbul Panic as police fire tear gas at protest
"The police where there yesterday, they are there today, and they will be there tomorrow. Taksim Square cannot be allowed to be a place where marginal groups can freely roam," he said in a televised speech.

The clashes in Istanbul subsided Saturday afternoon, when police allowed protesters to flow into the square. The protesters pelted police vehicles with stones as they withdrew from the area.

At least 79 people, including 26 members of the Turkish security forces, were injured in the clashes across the country, Interior Minister Muammer Guler told Turkey's semi-official Anadolu news agency on Saturday.

Among the injured were 14 in Istanbul, including one who suffered brain trauma, the Istanbul governor's office said.
Turkish authorities have detained 939 people in connection with the protests, Guler told Anadolu.

In the Ankara, police fired rubber bullets and tear gas at protesters, with some chanting "Tayyip resign," as they marched on the neighborhood of Kizilay, demonstrators told CNN.

"Police are everywhere, and helicopters are monitoring our movements," one protester said.

"Whenever police see us march, they come and gas us. ...We were gassed, we disbursed and then gathered again."
Erdogan conceded in his speech on Saturday that Turkish security forces had made excessive use of tear gas against demonstrators.

"There have been errors in the actions of the security forces, especially with regard to use of pepper gas. Right now that is being investigated, researched," he said.

"There is an error there, sure. When it is used excessively we are against it as well. And in fact there was such excess."

Earlier Saturday crowds gathered across central Istanbul and chanted "government resign" and "shoulder to shoulder against fascism" as phalanxes of helmeted riot police responded with volleys of tear gas canisters.

Lost amid the explosion of anti-government anger in the streets of Istanbul and elsewhere was the original source of the protests.

Earlier this week, several dozen activists tried to stage a sit-in in Gezi Park, the last bit of green space left in Taksim Square.

The demonstrators were protesting government plans to level the park and replace it with a reconstruction of a replica Ottoman-era military barracks and a shopping mall.

The protests have since devolved into a demonstration against Erdogan, the most powerful, popular and polarizing leader Turkey has seen in generations.

This major transport hub and commercial district has become the main battleground between angry protesters who hurled stones and bottles at riot police.

In some Istanbul neighborhoods, residents banged pots and pans in protest on the street during the prime minister's speech.

Erdogan's chief adviser, Ibrahim Kalin, said police have been ordered to be judicious in how they confront the demonstrators.

Addressing the original complaint, Kalin said that Istanbul's mayor said he is considering a number of projects at the park, and not necessarily a shopping mall. But the scope of the protests show there is a bigger issue about freedom of speech versus accusations of authoritative government.

"People are entitled to disagreement with the government, they can exercise their democratic rights, but they can do so within the context of a democratic society," Kalin said.

International human rights groups Amnesty International and Greenpeace have denounced what they describe as excessive use of police force against peaceful protesters.

Turkey has enjoyed an unprecedented decade of economic growth, since Erdogan's Justice and Development Party first swept to power after winning elections in 2002 on a campaign to institute pro-democratic reforms.

In recent years, the Turkish government has come under fire from media watchdog groups for its prolonged detention of more journalists than any other country in the world. Turkish security forces have also made such frequent use of tear gas against opposition protesters that some critics have started referring to the prime minister as "Chemical Tayyip."

But the protests this week appear to be "much more than the government and authorities expected," Erdogan Yildirim, a sociology professor at Middle East Technical University in Ankara, told CNN.

He said it unclear whether the protest movement will sustain its momentum, but it has caught the government's attention.

"The reason for massive protest in Turkey is in fact trivial. (A construction in a park.) But this shows the cumulative reaction to Erdogan," wrote Mustafa Akyol, a Turkish newspaper columnist and outspoken champion of "liberal Islam."

"Erdogan needs to see that the country needs more 'participatory democracy.' People want to influence decisions in public matters ... it is ultimately none other than Erdogan who cultivated this anger and who needs to calm it down.

"Erdogan probably did not know thousands of people who voted for him were among those raising their voices as well," columnist Sule Kulu wrote Saturday in the English-language newspaper Today's Zaman.

"If he does not return to his pro-democracy stance, this would prepare his fall in Turkish politics. İstanbul, his place of birth in politics, can bring him his political death."

Anyway I just took a walk tough city and apparently police has withdrawn from the streets. Only in one place did police contended the protestors and AKP office is set the light because of that. Really If police didn't intervene it probably wouldn't happen. More to point the main street where last nights conflict happened is in the protestors hands and guess what? Nobody is hurt nothing is destroyed there is big celebratory fires in the middle of street and people is drinking* around them singing etc. whole scene wouldn't be out of place in a american teen movie if it was on the beach.

*Yes drinking take that Erdoğan you and your stupid alcohol restrictions

Izmir is bad. I have a few friends who will be coming in later directly from the scene, they have the latest news. People are lighting bonfires and closing roads. Police sirens and sound of launchers firing tear gas are audible from my home. The city center is burning. It is a battleground. Police seems to be a bit more restrained compared to the utter morons in Istanbul, but that's not saying much. Everyone's expecting something to break, either the police to open fire on protesters with real weapons, or the army to get involved.

There are countless rumors. I can't separate fact from fiction at the moment. I'll try to inform all of you as soon as possible, when I have the news.

Istanbul is literally filled with cops now. They are moving on protesters everywhere except Taksim. Besiktas is a war zone and police is besieging a university that acts as an emergency hospital for wounded people. Everything was happening on the European side of the city until now but police has also moved 3 TOMAs ( big armored trucks with water cannons, the one in Tasoli's picture ) to Kadikoy in Anatolian side. It looks like there will be further clashes there too.

There are lots of unconfirmed claims and no way to know if they are true or not.

Mainstream media is known for their self censor so nobody trusts them anyway. People are used to official claims and numbers being wrong, so those are out too. That leaves what we call the whisper gazette, lots of unconfirmed claims moving through twitter and facebook.

There are claims that police is using CR gas because their CS gas stocks are depleted but these claims haven't been proven. I don't know if they will ever be proven as police gathers spent canisters.
Others say that there are non-uniformed police officers acting as provocateurs so the protesters turn violent, giving them the chance to discredit the whole protest. Again unconfirmed.
Another claim is that police has shot a protester in Ankara. There are pictures in a site but again no names or other way to learn the truth.

During all this, mainstream media is still covering the most important news: things like show trained dolphins and the love life of some model. So nobody knows what is truly happening, how many wounded are there or if there are any confirmed deaths.
Officially there are no deaths, unofficially there are three so far.

The media isn't doing its job and that puts a real wedge between general AKP supporters who use mainstream media and others who has made the transition to social-network based news. One half of the country doesn't see what the other sees and no one trust the other version.

Things aren't looking good now for anybody, protester or police. No matter what happens, AKP and the police have completely lost the trust of half of the country along with their legitimacy. This time, I don't think they will ever be able to get it back no matter how good a talk Erdogan gives.

I don't think he will care as long has he control %51 of the parliament.

Brash and stubborn, Turkey's leader doesn't shrink from a scrap. His voice booms when he gets on a podium and his folksy zingers enthrall supporters as much as they repulse opponents. That trademark combativeness, though, is fueling protests against his government.

For perhaps the first time in a decade of power, Recep Tayyip Erdogan looks vulnerable.

Turkey has been gripped by street skirmishes since Friday, when a police raid against a peaceful demonstration in an Istanbul park blew the lid off pent-up hostility toward the government. The protests are largely driven by visceral dislike among urban and secular circles for Erdogan, the three-term prime minister with designs on the presidency who helped build a middle class.

His hardheadedness once served him well, helping him project Turkish influence in the region, excise military meddling from politics and build a model for countries struggling to reconcile Islam and democratic impulses.
But his uncompromising style is now working against him, as members of the middle class he helped foster make it clear they've had enough of his rule.

Though many see him as out of touch with his early commitment to individual freedoms and democratic reforms, Erdogan can still count on a powerful support base of conservative Turks. Though some government officials have hinted at disagreement with their leader's approach, Erdogan has so far chosen confrontation over reconciliation, dismissing the demonstrators as rabble.

Erdogan, an ex-football player from a poor neighborhood of Istanbul, has led his ruling party to a string of electoral landslides over the fractured political opposition. But government opponents complain of unilateral decision-making and edicts that appear to be religiously motivated and pose a challenge to Turkey's secular principles.

Protesters vent their displeasure by calling the 59-year-old prime minister by his given name "Tayyip," a way of denigrating Erdogan because of his paternal demeanor, which would ordinarily command respect. A traditional term of address would be "Basbakanim," which means "My Prime Minister."

"Tayyip, winter is coming," warned one piece of protest graffiti. "Tayyip, would you like three kids like us?" read a sign held by a protester who lampooned Erdogan's calls for families to have three children.

Beril Eski, a 27-year-old editor at a television station, was not inclined to protest in the past. But she joined the demonstrations that have swept Istanbul because she felt insulted by police treatment of demonstrators and what she described as an overbearing government led by a man given to provocative rhetoric.

"If he said he was sorry — I'm not sure he's going to do that — if he said he would step back, that would make us feel comfortable," Eski said. "That would make us feel that we have a say in our future."

She said she had had been sympathetic to his years of effort to remove the political influence of military-backed elites, which had sidelined Erdogan's traditional constituency of religiously devout Turks in the past. But now that Erdogan's base is in charge, she said, he has a growing sense of entitlement.

"It's too much about his style, too much about his being the single man in control," Eski said.

Turkey has long been guided by strongman cults. There were centuries of Ottoman imperial rulers; then Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the national founder who imposed an unrelenting vision of secularism that benefited like-minded elites; and the military, quick to step in when unhappy with civilian leadership.

On Erdogan's watch, the economy has grown, the military has dropped out of politics and diplomats have confidently fanned out across the region. The rapid expansion of Turkish Airlines, the national flagship, symbolizes the ambitions of a country that started to rediscover the purported glories of an Ottoman era seen as backward by Ataturk, whose image has been seen on posters and flags at the recent protests.

A product of political Islam, Erdogan reassured supporters of Western-style democracy with an early push for European Union membership. But opponents feel his government's emphasis on "morality," and measures such as restrictions on alcohol consumption, mask a campaign to tamper with their most intimate decisions in the name of Islam.

The prime minister was so confident in the past that national billboards have linked his legacy to plans for the centenary of the national founding in 2023. That lofty vision ties in with his ambition, now in doubt, to switch Turkey to a presidential system of government by referendum, allowing him to run for the post and possibly stay at Turkey's helm for another decade.

"We won't let Erdogan be defeated by anyone. Neither we, nor our voters, would allow that. He is a centenary leader. Our prime minister is the one who led the great transformation of Turkey," Yalcin Akdogan, an aide to the prime minister, said Monday in an interview with HaberTurk television.

Still, Erdogan no longer seems politically untouchable.

"I think people are excited to possibly witness a David and Goliath story," said Arda Batu, vice chairman of the ARI Movement, a non-governmental group based in Istanbul.

He said, however, that the protesters were unlikely to defeat him even though they had inflicted an "important wound" on the country's leader.

"It seems there is no political party to harness this energy" in the streets, Batu wrote in an email to The Associated Press. "I think that the greatest strength of this political movement, the fact that it was an independent public movement, also points to the greatest weakness in Turkish politics, the lack of strong opposition."

Garanti Bank, Turkey's third-biggest lender, said on Tuesday a small number of its customers had cancelled credit cards and withdrawn savings in protest at a sister media company's coverage of anti-government demonstrations.

Tens of thousands of people have staged protests in cities across Turkey and many have complained that domestic broadcasters and newspapers are not adequately covering their action out of fear of government reprisals.
Dogus Holding, which owns a major stake in Garanti, also controls the NTV television station, which has angered the protesters with its coverage.

Several dozen people staged a brief demonstration outside Garanti's Istanbul headquarters on Tuesday.
"Some customers have cancelled their cards and accounts, but it has been limited," Chief Executive Ergun Ozen told Reuters.

He said 35-40 million lira (12.1 million pounds -13.8 million pounds) in funds had been withdrawn in the past week, from total accounts of 95 billion, while around 1,500 of Garanti's 8.5 million credit cards had been cancelled.
In the past, Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan's government has levied heavy tax fines and seized the assets of media firms perceived to be critical of his administration. The government has denied any political motivation in such cases.

Charon wrote:Personally I'd prefer to not see this end in yet another Military coup for Turkey. But they haven't done so horribly for coups in the past as mostly the military seems keen to only go "Knock that Islamist shit off".

frigidmagi wrote:In some cities such as Izmir, police are reportedly arresting anyone they can find using Twitter

In a series of increasingly belligerent speeches to cheering supporters Sunday, Turkey's prime minister demanded an end to the 10-day anti-government protests that have spread across the country, saying those who do not respect the government will pay.

Recep Tayyip Erdogan said his patience was running out with the protesters, who have occupied Istanbul's main Taksim Square for more than a week and have held hundreds of demonstrations in dozens of cities across the country.

Raising the stakes for those opposing him on Turkish streets and squares, Erdogan said he plans to bring out his supporters for rallies in Ankara and Istanbul next weekend.

Erdogan's increasingly fiery tone could inflame tensions, with tens of thousands of anti-government protesters in the country's largest city, Istanbul, and thousands in the capital, Ankara, remaining on the streets. On two occasions, including one in the southern city of Adana on Saturday night, clashes have been reported between Erdogan supporters and protesters.

Protests have been held in 78 cities across the country since May 31, sparked by a violent police crackdown on a peaceful protest objecting to the redevelopment of Taksim Square and its Gezi Park.

They have since morphed into a general denunciation of what many see as Erdogan's increasingly authoritarian ways after a decade in power, and as an attempt to impose his conservative, religious mores in a country governed by secular laws.

The protests have attracted a diverse crowd from all social backgrounds and age groups. Three people have died, including a police officer in Adana who fell into an underpass under construction while chasing demonstrators. More than 4,300 protesters have sought medical treatment, human rights groups have said.

"We showed patience but our patience has its limits," Erdogan told a crowd of thousands of party supporters who turned out to cheer his arrival at Ankara airport on Sunday, in the third of about seven speeches given through the afternoon and evening.

Looking much like a candidate on a campaign trail, Erdogan delivered speeches at two airports, a sports hall, two Ankara districts and atop a bridge before heading to his party headquarters. At each, thousands of supporters turned out to cheer him.

"Stand firm, don't yield, Turkey is with you," they chanted.

Erdogan called repeatedly for the protests to end.

"I call on my brothers who are duped: please put an end to your actions. Look, we have come to these days with patience. As a prime minister I say: enough!"

In a separate speech, he added: "Otherwise I will have to speak the language you understand. Patience has an end. You cannot show Turkey as a country where there is an environment of terror."

As he spoke, tens of thousands of protesters turned out in Istanbul's Taksim Square, while thousands more turned out on the seafront in the western coastal city of Izmir, television footage showed. In the capital, police used water cannon to break up a gathering by thousands of demonstrators in Ankara's Kizilay Square.

Clashes also broke out between about 2,000 protesters and riot police in Sultangazi, a troubled neighborhood on the outskirts of Istanbul populated mainly by Kurds and Alevis.

Erdogan once again belittled the protesters, calling them "capulcu," the Turkish word for vandals.

"If you look in the dictionary, you will see how right a description this is," he said. "Those who burn and destroy are called capulcu. Those who back them are of the same family."

The protesters have turned Erdogan's label of them as "capulcu" into a humorous retort, printing stickers with the word, scrawling it on their tents and uploading music videos onto social network sites.

"All they do is to break and destroy, to attack public buildings ... They didn't stop at that," Erdogan said. "They attacked daughters who wear headscarves. They entered Dolmabahce mosque with their beer bottles and their shoes."

Some of the injured in the initial clashes in Istanbul's Besiktas area were treated in Dolmabahce mosque. The mosque's imam has denied reports that people entered with beer. In the initial days of the protests, some women said they were harassed verbally. The majority of protesters, however, have denounced those who did it and have been welcoming toward them.

Deniz Zeyrek, a journalist and political commentator for Radikal newspaper, said Erdogan was seeking to show that he has more supporters than those protesting against him.

"He believes that it will make his support base more dynamic and gain from the crisis, not lose," Zeyrek said on NTV television. "He is engaged in a race to show which side can garner more supporters."

Zeyrek said Erdogan's party had been bussing supporters to airports to greet the prime minister, "whereas the supporters at Kugulu Park (in Ankara) are there on their own initiatives. They went there despite the police batons and the tear gas."

"He is engaged in a show of force at every stop he makes. This is causing more reaction and making the protesters more determined," he said.

But Erdogan denied he was trying to raise tension or be divisive, and insisted the protests were a way of undermining a government that was elected with 50 percent of the vote just two years ago.

"Those unable to topple (the governing Justice and Development party) at the ballot box tried to cause turmoil in the country by reverting to this. But this ploy won't work. We know their game. We have the stubbornness to overturn the game," he said.

The protesters have been camping out in Istanbul's Gezi Park for the past 10 days. The park's redevelopment would replace the park with a replica Ottoman-era barracks, and tear down an old cultural center. Initial plans included a shopping mall, but they have now been ditched in favor a theater, opera house or museum, possibly with cafes.

Erdogan's tone caused dismay among protesters in Ankara.

"As the prime minister continues (with) his harsh style, the resistance also continues and is getting bigger," said Cagdas Ersoy, a 23-year-old student who joined the protests in Ankara's Kizilay square. "He is making the resistance bigger without realizing it."

Protester Cihan Akburun said: "He should not provoke the people. We invite everyone to (have) common sense."
Erdogan said his future will be determined not in the street but at the ballot box.

"It's not these marginal groups, but the people, who are going to call us to account, and they are going to do it at the ballot box," he said.

General Havoc wrote:None of you want to know what follows that.

NBC News wrote:Troops could be called to quell Turkey unrest

By Jonathon Burch and Daren Butler, Reuters

Turkey's deputy prime minister said Monday the armed forces could be called up if needed to help quell popular protests that have swept Turkish cities in the last two weeks, the first time the possibility of a military role has been raised.

Bulent Arinc made the remarks in Ankara, where 1,000 striking trade union workers faced off briefly against police backed by several water cannon, before police retreated and the crowd left.

In Istanbul, the cradle of protests that have presented Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan with the greatest public challenge to his 10-year leadership, several hundred union members also marched in sympathy with anti-government demonstrations.

They were prevented from entering Taksim Square, the focal point of the unrest, but after workers had moved off, between 200 and 300 mainly young protesters, some of them throwing stones from slingshots, fought with police.

The violence was minor compared with the weekend, which saw some of the fiercest clashes so far when police fired teargas and water cannon to clear thousands of people from the square.

"Our police, our security forces are doing their jobs. If it's not enough, then the gendarmes will do their jobs. If that's not enough ... we could even use elements of the Turkish Armed Forces," Arinc told Turkey's state-run TRT television.

Any use of the army would be a dramatic step in Turkey, where Erdogan has pushed through democratic reforms including taming a military that toppled four governments in four decades.

There were also clashes on Monday in the city of Eskisehir, around 200 km (120 miles) southeast of Istanbul, where police used teargas and water cannon to disperse crowds and cleared away hundreds of tents, the Dogan news agency reported.

Monday's union marches were peaceful and small, and, while it was unclear how many of the 850,000 public workers answered union calls to strike, there were no signs of major disruption.

What began late in May as a protest by environmentalists upset at government plans to build on a public park adjoining Taksim has grown into a movement against Erdogan, who opponents say is overbearing and meddles in their personal lives.

The unrest has yet to seriously threaten Erdogan's position.

A new poll showed that 35.3 percent of people would vote for his AK Party were an election to be held straight away, compared with 36.3 percent in April.

In the first survey published since protests started, opposition groups also gained in popularity, most notably the CHP whose support jumped to 22.7 percent in June from 15.3 percent two months ago.

European Union enlargement commissioner Stefan Fuele expressed concern about developments in Turkey, whose negotiations to join the bloc have stalled, partly over worries about its record on human rights and freedom of speech.

Germany has long harbored doubts about admitting Turkey to the EU. Chancellor Angela Merkel said she was "appalled, like many others" at Turkey's tough response to the protests.

"I would like to see those who ... have a different opinion and a different idea of society having some space in a Turkey that moves into the 21st century," she told the German broadcaster RTL.

"What's happening in Turkey at the moment is not in line with our idea of the freedom to demonstrate or freedom of speech."

Erdogan sought to seize back the initiative over the weekend by holding huge rallies in Istanbul and Ankara. Hundreds of thousands turned up to see a leader who has won three successive elections, and whom they considered unfairly under siege.

The blunt-talking 59-year-old said the rallies were to kick off campaigning for local elections next year and not related to the unrest, but they were widely seen as a show of strength.

A defiant Erdogan told a sea of flag-waving supporters in Istanbul on Sunday that the disturbances had been manipulated by "terrorists" and dismissed suggestions that he was behaving like a dictator, a constant refrain from protesters on the streets.

Just a few kilometers away, police fought running battles with protesters in clashes that lasted well into the evening.

The stark contrast between events in different parts of Istanbul highlighted how the protests have polarized Turkey, its conservative religious heartland largely backing Erdogan while Western-facing liberals swell the ranks of the protesters.

Chancellor Angela Merkel (CDU) condemns the violence of the Turkish police.

In their view, the security forces there, "proceeded much too hard," Merkel said before leaving for the G-8 summit on Monday at the television station RTL. "What happened in Turkey at the moment does not correspond to our ideas of freedom of demonstration of expression." To the television images of the evacuation of Gezi Park in Istanbul, she said: "I am shocked how many other people as well."

Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle described the crackdown as a major setback. "We regret that the Turkish government has not chosen the path of dialogue and de-escalation, and we criticize this also," said the German leaders.

frigidmagi wrote:Additionally I don't think the Turkish Army gives 3 shits about joining the EU.

Josh wrote:

frigidmagi wrote:Additionally I don't think the Turkish Army gives 3 shits about joining the EU.

Given that the whole Greece-Ireland-Spain-Cyprus-Portugal-Italy (GIPSCI) acronym keeps growing, I can't blame them on that end.