Police Attack Protesters in Istanbul’s Taksim Square
ISTANBUL — Police officers attacked a group of peaceful demonstrators Friday in Istanbul’s Taksim Square with water cannons and tear gas, sending scores of people, protesters and tourists alike, scurrying into shops and luxury hotels and turning the center of this city into a battle zone at the height of tourist season.
By TIM ARANGO and CEYLAN YEGINSU
Protesters waded through tear gas on Friday at Taksim Square in Istanbul.
The police action, with water cannons and tear gas, was the latest
crackdown by Turkey’s government against a movement challenging plans to
destroy a park.
Ozan Kose/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Sedat Suna/European Pressphoto Agency
Associated Press
Tolga Bozoglu/European Pressphoto Agency
Ozan Kose/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Bulent Kilic/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Tolga Bozoglu/European Pressphoto Agency
ISTANBUL — Police officers attacked a group of peaceful demonstrators Friday in Istanbul’s Taksim Square with water cannons and tear gas, sending scores of people, protesters and tourists alike, scurrying into shops and luxury hotels and turning the center of this city into a battle zone at the height of tourist season.
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The police action was the latest violent crackdown by the government
against a growing protest movement challenging plans to destroy a park
in Taksim Square, Istanbul’s equivalent of Cairo’s Tahrir Square, and
redevelop it with a replica Ottoman-era army barracks that would house a
shopping mall.
But while the destruction of the park, which is filled with sycamore
trees and is the last significant green space in the center of Istanbul,
set off the protests at the beginning of the week, the gatherings have
broadened into a wider expression of anger against the heavy-handed
tactics and urban development plans of the government and its leader,
Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Mr. Erdogan’s party, now in power a
decade, is increasingly viewed by many Turks as becoming authoritarian.
Much of the anger centers on the struggle over Istanbul’s public spaces.
Mr. Erdogan’s government has preceded with disputed urban development
plans with little public input, while his police forces have
increasingly used tear gas against peaceful protesters, resulting in
scores of injuries, including the hospitalization on Friday of a Kurdish
lawmaker, who had become a vocal participant in the protests, after he
was hit by a tear gas canister.
The protest movement comes amid continued public anger at Turkey’s
policy of supporting the rebels in Syria, which many Turks feel has led
to a violent spillover inside Turkey, including recent car bombings in
the southern city of Reyhanli, which killed dozens of people. The rising
public disenchantment represents a significant political challenge to
Mr. Erdogan, who is planning to run for the presidency next year and has
been trying to alter the Constitution to create a more powerful
presidential system.
In the early afternoon Friday, as protesters gathered and began shouting
antigovernment chants, police officers in riot gear began surrounding
the group, positioning vehicles that resembled tanks at the edge of the
square around the protesters, who were mostly sitting.
“Taksim is ours, we are not giving it to the A.K.P.!” they chanted,
referring to Mr. Erdogan’s Islamist-rooted Justice and Development
Party, known as A.K.P.
As they chanted, police officers casually put on their gas masks and the
operators of the tanklike vehicles aimed their big guns, which fire a
mixture of water and tear gas, at the group. Then chaos erupted.
Protesters and onlookers, some of them tourists, ran down side streets
where shopkeepers offered sliced lemons to soothe the burning sensation
of the gas, and pharmacists doled out ointments for skin burns.
“The pigs, the pigs,” said Esra Yurtnac, who was crying as she sought
refuge in a bakery after being gassed. “All they know is how to use
gas.”
She added, “They think they can silence us with force, but they won’t.”
The chaos followed a dawn raid on an Occupy Wall Street-style encampment
in Gezi Park, near Taksim, in which the police also used tear gas to
drive away protesters and later barricaded the park. In an earlier raid
on the camp, on Thursday, the police set fire to some tents. The brief
occupation of the park, which began after bulldozers had started to take
down trees, had taken on a festival-like atmosphere, with yoga,
barbecues and musical performances, while the gathered changed, “Taksim
is ours! Istanbul is ours!”
The people adorned the camp with banners expressing the rising anger at
the reshaping of Istanbul’s urban spaces by the government. One read,
“Don’t touch our neighborhood, our squares, our trees, our water, our
soil, our homes, our villages, our cities and our parks.”
Another referred to Mr. Erdogan and the growing number of shopping malls
being built around the city. “Let all shopping malls crumble and let
Tayyip get crushed by their rubble,” the banner read.
In building new mosques and emphasizing Turkey’s Islamic past over its
Byzantine and Roman legacies, Mr. Erdogan has been referred to as a
latter-day Ottoman sultan, with little regard for seeking public input
on the projects. On Wednesday, the government held a groundbreaking
ceremony for a third bridge over the Bosporus that is being named for an
Ottoman sultan.
“It’s all about superiority, and ruling over the people like sultans,”
said one of the protesters, Seckin Barbaros, 26, a former journalist who
is now unemployed. “When were we asked what we wanted? We have three
times the amount of mosques as we do schools. Yet they are building new
mosques. There are eight shopping malls in the vicinity of Taksim, yet
they want to build another.”
In a speech earlier in the week, Mr. Erdogan dismissed the protesters
and said the destruction of park would go ahead, “no matter what they
do.”
The anger in the streets is also a rebuke to the economic policies of
the government, which have relied heavily on construction and new
housing in Istanbul to power economic growth. Some analysts worry the
approach could lead to a bubble much like the one in the United States
that led to the economic collapse of 2008.
Ms. Barbaros said, “What about the day when all these shopping malls
will be empty like in Greece and then they will wish they never
constructed them.”
She added: “Where are the opera houses? The theaters? The culture and
youth centers? What about those? They only choose what will bring them
the most profit without considering what we need.”
Another demonstrator, Seyfettin Sabaz, who is training to be a dentist,
said: “Many of the Turkish public think that we are here as
environmentalists to save our sycamore trees. But that’s not it. We are
here to stand up against those that are trying to make a profit from our
land.”
Around Taksim Square, the site of several other tear gas attacks on
protesters this year, including one on May Day demonstrators, the chaos
is taking on a sense of the familiar to shopkeepers who are becoming
accustomed to offering shelter and aid to tear gas victims.
“I own a decorations shop, but for the past year it has felt like I run a
shelter for gas raid victims,” said Ali Yildrim, who has lived in
Istanbul for 35 years. “Soon I’ll be keeping lemons and medicine behind
my counter.”
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