Turkish PM: Protesters are ‘walking with terrorism’
Hundreds of police and protesters have been injured since Friday in the riots, which began with a demonstration to halt construction in a park in an Istanbul square and grew into mass protests against what opponents call Erdogan’s authoritarianism.
Turkey’s leftist Public Workers Unions Confederation (KESK), which represents 240,000 members, said it would hold a “warning strike” today and tomorrow to protest over the crackdown on what had begun as peaceful protests.
Erdogan has dismissed the protests as the work of secularist enemies who never reconciled to the mandate of his Islamist AKP party, which has won three straight elections, overseen an economic boom and raised Turkey’s profile in the region.
“This is a protest organised by extremist elements,” Erdogan said at a news conference before departing on a trip to North Africa. “We will not give away anything to those who live arm in arm with terrorism.
“Many things have happened in this country, they’ve hanged, they’ve poisoned, but we will walk towards the future with determination and through holding onto our values,” he added, an allusion to Turkey’s murky past of military coups and covert action by militant secularist forces.
The unrest has delivered a blow to Turkish financial markets that have thrived under Erdogan. Shares fell more than 6% and the lira fell to 16-month lows.
Erdogan said the protesters had no support in the general population and he gave no indication he was preparing any concessions.
Protesters accuse Erdogan of furthering a hidden Islamist agenda in a country with a secularist constitution.
Some object to tightening restrictions on alcohol sales and other measures seen as religiously motivated. Others complain of the costs from Erdogan’s support of rebels in neighbouring Syria’s civil war.
Still others have economic grievances, viewing the disputed development project in Istanbul’s Taksim Square as emblematic of wild greed among those who have benefited from Turkey’s boom.
Protesters gathered in Taksim yesterday for a fourth day of protests. Barricades of rubble hindered traffic along the Bosphorus waterway and blocked entry into the area. Leftist groups hung out red and black flags.
Nearby walls were plastered with cartoon posters of an image borrowed from a photograph of a policeman spraying tear gas at a young woman in a red summer dress, adopted as an emblem of aggressive police conduct. The caption read: “The more they spray, the bigger we get.”
Istanbul police kept a low profile and were not to be seen around the main gathering points at Taksim and the area of Besiktas.
The protests had appeared to ease off on Saturday night, but were re-ignited by defiant comments by Erdogan on Sunday afternoon describing the protesters as “a few looters” driven on by the opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP).
“Rather than try to calm the situation...some of Mr Erdogan’s public statements about the protesters have added fuel to the fire,” Robert O’Daly, Turkey analyst at The Economist Intelligence Unit, said.
“Mr Erdogan appears to have underestimated the mood in the country. The absence of an effective opposition in parliament during the ten years that the AKP and Mr Erdogan have been in power has reduced the constraints on government.
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