Ergodan defiant as protesters call for more demonstrations

by Natalie de Vallieres and Biodun Iginla, BBC News

ISTANBUL | Sun Jun 9, 2013 7:25am EDT
 

Turkish protest organizers called for a demonstration on Sunday to keep up pressure on the government to sack those responsible for a violent police crackdown and to abandon plans to redevelop a central Istanbul square.
Tens of thousands of Turks massed in Taksim Square late on Saturday, where riot police backed by helicopters and armored vehicles first clashed with protesters a week ago, some chanting for Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan to resign.

 

Erdogan remained defiant. His AK Party on Saturday ruled out early elections and senior party officials said they may call their own public meetings in Istanbul and Ankara next week.
Still by far the country's most popular politician, Erdogan has pressed ahead with government business as usual.
"My beloved brothers, we're walking towards a better Turkey. Don't allow those who attempt to plant divisive seeds to do so," he told a crowd of supporters at the airport in the southern city of Adana, on his way to open a sporting event.
What began as a campaign against government plans to build over Gezi Park in Taksim Square, spiraled into an unprecedented display of public anger over the perceived authoritarianism of Erdogan and his Islamist-rooted AK Party.
Police fired teargas and water cannon at protesters night after night in Istanbul and Ankara last week, in clashes which have left three dead and close to 5,000 injured.
The organizers of the initial protests in Taksim, calling themselves Taksim Solidarity, repeated their call for the redevelopment plans to be abandoned, police use of teargas to be banned, those responsible for police violence to be dismissed and bans on demonstrations to be lifted.
"The demands are obvious. We call on government to take account of the reaction (on the street), act responsibly and fulfill demands being expressed by millions of people everyday," the group said in a statement.
It called for another mass rally later on Sunday around Gezi Park, a leafy corner of the square where hundreds of activists have been sleeping in tents and vandalized buses, or wrapped in blankets under plane trees over the past week.
Erdogan has given no indication of plans to clear out Taksim, around which protesters have built dozens of barricades made of ripped up paving stones, street signs, vandalized vehicles and corrugated iron, clogging part of the city centre.
Taksim is lined by luxury hotels that should be doing a roaring trade as the summer season starts in one of the world's most-visited cities. But a forced eviction might trigger a repeat of the clashes seen earlier in the week, which brought international condemnation.
Erdogan has made clear he has no intention of stepping aside, pointing to his AK Party's rising share of the vote in the country's past three elections, and has no clear rivals inside the party or out.
He has enacted many democratic reforms, taming a military that toppled four governments in four decades, starting entry talks with the European Union and forging peace talks with Kurdish rebels to end a three-decade-old war.
But in recent years, critics say his style, always forceful and emotional, has become authoritarian.
Media have come under pressure, opponents have been arrested over alleged coup plots, and moves such as restrictions on alcohol sales have unsettled secular middle-class Turks who are sensitive to any encroachment of religion on their daily lives.