Protesters set up barricades and plumes of tear gas rose in Istanbul's
streets into the early hours after Turkish riot police rousted a group
who had vowed to stay in Gezi Park despite Prime Minister Recep Tayyip
Erdogan's warnings to leave.
As dusk fell Saturday, hundreds of
white-helmeted riot police swept through the park and adjacent Taksim
Square, firing canisters of the acrid, stinging gas. Thousands of
peaceful protesters, choking on the fumes and stumbling among the tents,
put up little physical resistance.
The protests began as an
environmental sit-in to prevent a development project at Gezi Park, but
have quickly spread to dozens of cities and spiraled into a broader
expression of discontent about what many say is Erdogan's increasingly
authoritarian decision-making. He vehemently denies the charge, pointing
to the strong support base that helped him win third consecutive term
with 50 percent of the vote in 2011.
As police cleared the
square, many ran into nearby hotels for shelter. A stand-off developed
at a luxury hotel on the edge of the park, where police opened up with
water cannons against protesters and journalists outside before throwing
tear gas at the entrance, filling the lobby with white smoke. At other
hotels, plain-clothes policemen turned up outside, demanding the
protesters come out.
Some protesters ran off into nearby streets,
setting up makeshift barricades and running from water cannons, tear
gas and rubber bullets.
As news of the raid broke, thousands of
people from other parts of Istanbul gathered and were attempting to
reach Taksim. Television showed footage of riot police firing tear gas
on a highway and bridge across the Bosphorus to prevent protesters from
heading to the area.
As the tear gas settled, bulldozers moved
into the park, scooping up debris and loading it into trucks. Crews of
workmen in fluorescent yellow vests and plain-clothes police went
through the abandoned belongings, opening bags and searching their
contents before tearing down the tents, food centers and library the
protesters had set up in what had become a bustling tent city.
Demonstrations
also erupted in other cities. In Ankara, at least 3,000 people swarmed
into John F. Kennedy street, where opposition party legislators sat down
at the front of the crowd facing the riot police _ not far from
Parliament. In Izmir, thousands converged at a seafront square.
Near
Gezi, ambulances ferried the injured to hospitals as police set up
cordons and roadblocks around the park, preventing anyone from getting
close.
Tayfun Kahraman, a member of Taksim Solidarity, an
umbrella group of protest movements, said an untold number of people in
the park had been injured _ some from rubber bullets.
"Let them
keep the park, we don't care anymore. Let it all be theirs. This
crackdown has to stop. The people are in a terrible state," he told The
Associated Press by phone.
Taksim Solidarity, on its Web site,
called the incursion "atrocious" and counted hundreds of injured _ which
it called a provisional estimate _ as well as an undetermined number of
arrests. Istanbul governor's office said at least 44 people were taken
to hospitals for treatment. None of them were in serious condition, it
said in a statement.
Huseyin Celik, the spokesman for Erdogan's Justice and Development Party, told NTV that the sit-in had to end.
"They had made their voice heard ... Our government could not have allowed such an occupation to go on until the end," he said.
It
was a violent police raid on May 31 against a small sit-in in Gezi Park
that sparked the initial outrage and spiraled into a much broader
protest. While those in the park have now fled, it was unclear whether
they would take their movement to other places, or try to return to the
park at a later time.
The protests, which left at least four
people dead and more than 5,000 injured, have dented Erdogan's
international reputation and infuriated him with a previously unseen
defiance to his rule.
Saturday's raid came less than two hours
after Erdogan threatened protesters in a boisterous speech in Sincan, an
Ankara suburb that is a stronghold of his party.
"I say this
very clearly: either Taksim Square is cleared, or if it isn't cleared
then the security forces of this country will know how to clear it," he
told tens of thousands of supporters at a political rally.
A second pro-government rally is planned in Istanbul on Sunday.
According
to the government's redevelopment plan for Taksim Square that caused
the sit-in, the park would be replaced with a replica Ottoman-era
barracks. Under initial plans, the construction would have housed a
shopping mall, though that has since been amended to the possibility of
an opera house, a theater and a museum with cafes.
On Friday,
Erdogan offered to defer to a court ruling on the legality of the
government's contested park redevelopment plan, and floated the
possibility of a referendum on it.
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