Turkish protesters yesterday said they would not leave an Istanbul park despite a call from Turkish President Abdullah Gul for them to withdraw and a pledge from Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan to hold a vote on plans to redevelop the site.
Hundreds of protesters, camped out for more than two weeks in tents in Gezi Park adjoining Istanbul’s central Taksim Square, said they would keep up their campaign after Ankara failed to meet demands including the release of detained demonstrators.
A police crackdown on peaceful campaigners in the park two weeks ago provoked an unprecedented wave of protest against Erdogan and his Justice and Development Party — an association of centrists and conservative religious elements — drawing in secularists, nationalists, professionals, trade unionists and students.
Photo: AFP
The unrest, in which police fired tear gas and water cannons at stone-throwing protesters night after night in cities including Istanbul and Ankara, left four people dead and about 5,000 injured, according to the Turkish Medical Association.
“The government has ignored clear and rightful demands since the beginning of the resistance. They tried to divide, provoke and damage our legitimacy,” the Taksim Solidarity platform, an umbrella group for the protesters, said in a statement.
“We will continue our resistance in the face of any injustice and unfairness taking place in our country,” the group said. “This is only the beginning.”
The decision looked set to inflame tensions in a crisis that has posed the biggest challenge yet to the decade-long rule of Erdogan’s Islamist-rooted government.
In Ankara, riot police again fired tear gas and water cannon to disperse demonstrators overnight. About 30 protesters were arrested.
The group, whose representatives met Erdogan at his official residence in Ankara on Thursday night, said it had seen no serious signs of progress in holding those responsible for the police crackdown to account, nor in investigating the four deaths, one of them a policeman, during the unrest.
Erdogan told protesters at Thursday’s talks that he would put plans to build a replica Ottoman-era barracks in Gezi Park on hold until a court rules on them, a more moderate stance after two weeks of defiance in which he when he called the protesters as “riff-raff” and said the plans would go ahead regardless.
“Young people, you have remained there long enough and delivered your message.... Why are you staying?” Erdogan said afterward in a speech broadcast on live television. “Don’t force us to use other methods.”
“The fact that negotiation and dialogue channels are open is a sign of democratic maturity,” Gul, who has struck a more conciliatory tone than Erdogan throughout the protests, said on his Twitter account yesterday.
“I believe this process will have good results. From now on everybody should return home,” he added.
Buoyed by the dialogue with Erdogan, the group said the protesters, many of whom are young and middle-class, were “stronger” than ever.
“The party in power has lost its legitimacy before the eyes of local and international media,” it said.
What began as a campaign by environmentalists to save what they say is one of central Istanbul’s few green spaces spiraled into the most serious show of defiance against Erdogan and his party yet in his decade in power.
The party planned to hold rallies in Ankara later yesterday and in Istanbul today. Erdogan on Friday said they mark the start of campaigning for local elections next year and are not to do with the Gezi Park protest, but they are widely seen as a show of strength in the face of the demonstrations.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
DITCH TACTICS: Kenyan officers were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch suspected to have been deliberately dug by Haitian gang members A Kenyan policeman deployed in Haiti has gone missing after violent gangs attacked a group of officers on a rescue mission, a UN-backed multinational security mission said in a statement yesterday. The Kenyan officers on Tuesday were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch “suspected to have been deliberately dug by gangs,” the statement said, adding that “specialized teams have been deployed” to search for the missing officer. Local media outlets in Haiti reported that the officer had been killed and videos of a lifeless man clothed in Kenyan uniform were shared on social media. Gang violence has left
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
Japan unveiled a plan on Thursday to evacuate around 120,000 residents and tourists from its southern islets near Taiwan within six days in the event of an “emergency”. The plan was put together as “the security situation surrounding our nation grows severe” and with an “emergency” in mind, the government’s crisis management office said. Exactly what that emergency might be was left unspecified in the plan but it envisages the evacuation of around 120,000 people in five Japanese islets close to Taiwan. China claims Taiwan as part of its territory and has stepped up military pressure in recent years, including