Riot police clear Taksim Square; protestors set up barricades on streets

Protesters have set up barricades in Istanbul’s streets after Turkish riot police cleared out the occupation of a park at the centre of the strongest challenge to prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s 10-year tenure.

For more than two weeks, protesters had flouted Mr Erdogan’s warnings to vacate the area around the city’s Taksim Square.

As dusk fell on Saturday, hundreds of white-helmeted riot police swept through Taksim Square and Gezi Park, firing canisters of tear gas as they stormed through the tents set up throughout the park.

Thousands of protesters, choking on the fumes and stumbling among the tents, put up little physical resistance, even as plain-clothes police manhandled many of them from the park.

The protests began as an environmental sit-in to prevent a development project at Gezi Park, but have quickly spread to dozens of cities and spiraled into a broader expression of discontent about what many say is Mr Erdogan’s increasingly authoritarian decision-making.

The prime minister denies the charge, pointing to his strong support base which allowed him to win his third consecutive term with 50% of the vote in 2011.

As police cleared the square, many protesters fled into nearby hotels for shelter.

A stand-off developed at one hotel on the edge of the park, where police opened up with water cannon against protesters and journalists outside before releasing tear gas at the entrance, filling the lobby with white smoke. At other hotels, plain-clothes policemen turned up outside, urging the protesters to come out.

Some protesters ran off into nearby streets, setting up makeshift barricades and running from water cannon, tear gas and rubber bullets into Sunday. Plumes of white tear gas could be seen rising from the streets.

As news of the raid broke, thousands of people from other parts of Istanbul gathered and were attempting to reach Taksim. Television footage showed riot police firing tear gas on a highway and bridge across the Bosphorus to prevent protesters from heading to the area.

Demonstrations also erupted in other cities. In Ankara, at least 3,000 people swarmed into John F Kennedy street, where opposition party legislators sat down at the front of the crowd facing the riot police – not far from Parliament. In Izmir, thousands of people converged at a seafront square.

Near Gezi, ambulances ferried the injured to hospitals as police set up cordons and roadblocks around the park, preventing anyone from getting close.

Tayfun Kahraman, a member of Taksim Solidarity, an umbrella group of protest movements, said an untold number of people in the park had been injured – some from rubber bullets.

“Let them keep the park, we don’t care anymore. Let it all be theirs. This crackdown has to stop. The people are in a terrible state,” he said.

Taksim Solidarity called the incursion “atrocious” and counted hundreds of injured – which it called a provisional estimate – as well as an undetermined number of arrests. The Istanbul governor’s office said at least 44 people were taken to hospitals for treatment. None of them were said to be in a serious condition.

Huseyin Celik, a spokesman for Mr Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party, told NTV that the sit-in had to end.

“They had made their voice heard ... Our government could not have allowed such an occupation to go on until the end,” he said.

As the tear gas settled, bulldozers moved into the park, scooping up debris and loading it into trucks. Crews of workmen in fluorescent yellow vests and plain-clothes police went through the abandoned belongings, opening bags and searching their contents before tearing down the tents, food centres and library the protesters had set up in what had become a bustling tent city.

It was a violent police raid on May 31 against a small sit-in in Gezi Park that sparked the initial outrage and spiralled into a much broader protest. While those in the park have now fled, it was unclear whether they would take their movement to other places, or try to return to the park at a later time.

The protests, which left at least four people dead and more than 5,000 injured, have dented Mr Erdogan’s international reputation and infuriated him with a previously unseen defiance to his rule.