Turkey in threat to deploy army as protests rage
The presence of soldiers on the streets would mark a major escalation of a crisis that has raged for nearly three weeks and has posed the biggest challenge yet to prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s Islamic-rooted government.
The announcement came as police continued to spray tear gas and water at clusters of demonstrators in Istanbul and the capital Ankara, in battles that raged with fresh intensity after the weekend eviction of protesters occupying Istanbul’s Gezi Park, the epicentre of the protest movement.
Police “will use all their powers” to end the unrest, Deputy prime minister Bulent Arinc said in a televised interview. “If this is not enough, we can even utilise the Turkish armed forces in cities.”
Turkey’s two main trade unions meanwhile began a nationwide strike against the police crackdown on Gezi Park demonstrators, a stoppage the government branded “illegal”.
The KESK and DISK trade unions, which together represent hundreds of thousands of workers, said they were holding demos to call for the police violence to “end immediately”.
Turkey’s once all-powerful army, which staged four coups in 50 years, has stayed silent throughout the turmoil, making it the first time in the country’s modern history that it has not intervened in a major political crisis.
Observers say the pro-secular military has been steadily sidelined during Erdogan’s decade in power, though some members of the gendarmerie were stationed at key points in Istanbul at the weekend to stop protesters from trying to cross the Bosphorus bridge.
At a rally of more than 100,000 supporters of his ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) on Sunday, the premier insisted it was his “duty” to order police to storm Gezi Park after protesters defied his warnings to clear out.
“I said we were at an end. That it was unbearable. Yesterday the operation was carried out and it was cleaned up,” a combative Erdogan told a sea of cheering loyalists. “It was my duty as prime minister.”
The crisis began when a peaceful sit-in to save Gezi’s 600 trees from being razed prompted a brutal police response on May 31.
So far four people have been killed and nearly 7,500 people injured, according to the Turkish Medical Association (TBB).
