Anti-gov’t protests spread across Turkey for third day
ISTANBUL ( AFP) Ñ Turkey's Islamist- rooted government faced growing pressure yesterday after angry demonstrators clashed for a third night with police in a nationwide wave of protests.
Police fired tear gas and water cannon Sunday at activists who marched on Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s offices in Istanbul and Ankara.
“Dictator, resign!... We will resist until we win,” yelled the crowds, in the latest of a string of protests that have by some accounts left hundreds injured.
Police had withdrawn on Saturday from Istanbul’s main Taksim Square, the symbolic heart of demonstrations that started over an unpopular building project nearby and boiled over into a general protest against the government.
Crowds of whistling, flagwaving activists continued to cover Taksim Square but the flashpoint shifted late Sunday to the area near Erdogan’s nearby Istanbul base.
AFP reporters there saw police disperse thousands of demonstrators and incidents continued into early yesterday.
Interior Minister Muammer Guler said earlier that more than 1,700 people had been arrested in the unrest nationwide, though most have since been released.
He said 58 civilians and 115 security officers had been injured over several days of protests, although rights groups have put the number of injured higher.
A doctors’ union in Ankara said more than 400 civilians had been injured there including some with serious head wounds.
Rights groups have denounced the violence that police meted out to demonstrators and Turkey’s Western allies have appealed for restraint.
The unrest began as a local outcry against plans to redevelop Gezi Park, a rare green spot near Taksim, but after a heavy-handed police response the protests spread to other districts — and then to dozens of cities across Turkey.
Accused by critics of pushing an increasingly conservative and authoritarian agenda, Erdogan’s government is facing the biggest protests since it took power in 2002.