Protesters shielded themselves as riot police used water cannon to disperse them during a May Day demonstration on Thursday in Istanbul.
Photo
Protesters shielded
themselves as riot police used water cannon to disperse them during a
May Day demonstration on Thursday in Istanbul.Credit
Yagiz Karahan/Reuters
ISTANBUL
— Thousands of demonstrators took to the streets of Istanbul on
Thursday in May Day rallies, confronting riot police officers to protest
a government mired in a corruption scandal and accused of imposing a
creeping authoritarianism in Turkey.
The
police fired tear gas, used water cannons and shut down main streets to
disperse hundreds of protesters seeking to challenge a government ban
on May Day celebrations in Taksim Square, also the scene of
antigovernment protests last summer against the administration of Prime
Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
More
than 140 people were detained and 90 people, including 19 police
officers, were injured in clashes that continued in the main and back
streets of central Istanbul until early afternoon, the Istanbul
Governor’s Office said in a statement.
May
Day, or International Workers’ Day, historically has been a lightning
rod for violence in Turkey as people have used the occasion to convey
their grievances. May 1 was declared a national holiday in 2009.
Photo
Protesters clashed with the riot police during a May Day rally in Istanbul on Thursday.Credit
Tolga Bozoglu/European Pressphoto Agency
May
Day demonstrations also took place in parts of Asia, including Hong
Kong and Seoul, where anger following a recent ferry sinking in South
Korea was expected to give the protests particular resonance. Thousands
of Russian workers gathered in Red Square in Moscow in a show of the
patriotism that has surged following events in Ukraine.
In
Turkey, anger against Mr. Erdogan has grown in recent months as a
corruption scandal has plunged his government into crisis and challenged
the position of the prime minister, who has held power for more than a
decade. In recent weeks, Mr. Erdogan has infuriated the country’s
secular, liberal class by seeking to ban Twitter and clamping down on
social media. Critics have also accused him of abusing his power by
purging police officials and judges in an apparent attempt to undermine a
corruption investigation that has ensnared him and key allies.
The
protests on Thursday were some of the largest since mass demonstrations
across Turkey last June, when tens of thousands of people demonstrated
against Mr. Erdogan’s government.
To
quell the latest protests, nearly 40,000 police were mobilized in
Istanbul, according to law enforcement officials, and the government
shut down bus and ferry lines and blocked roads leading to Taksim
Square. But several unions and civic groups defied the restrictions,
claiming the ban was illegal.
Hurriyet, a leading newspaper, reported
that a man intent on joining the May Day protests had tried to hijack
an airplane going from Nicosia, Cyprus, to Ankara on Thursday, locking
himself in the plane’s bathroom and threatening to detonate a bomb if
the flight wasn’t diverted to Istanbul. The newspaper said the flight
landed in Ankara, where the suspected hijacker, a 50-year-old man, was
arrested by the police.
In
central Istanbul, protesters built barricades on small streets leading
into Taksim Square and used slingshots to stone the police, who
responded with tear gas and water-cannon blasts from armored antiriot
vehicles. Young men wearing gas masks and hard hats responded by
throwing tear gas canisters back at the police lines, chanting
“resistance!”
By
midmorning, protesters, including the elderly and women, were
struggling to cope with smoke billowing in the air. Some demonstrators
used gas masks, surgical masks and construction goggles to protect
themselves against the measures employed by the security forces, who
have been criticized for what has been called a disproportionate use of
tear gas and water cannons against protesters since last summer.
“This
is fascism, this is Erdogan’s obsession about power, nothing else,”
said Funda Keles, director of a medical workers’ labor group, as she
treated protesters.
Union
members called on demonstrators to form a human wall to push through
the police forces. “Everywhere Taksim, everywhere May 1!” they chanted
as they marched toward the police lines. “Today our mission is to get to
the square. If we run from the gas then we’ll never get there and we
would have come here for nothing,” said Can Savas, 24, a student.
“We
insist because it is our legal right to demonstrate and there is no
reasonable explanation or legal pretext about this restriction,” said
Umar Karatepe, a spokesman for the Confederation of Progressive Trade
Unions of Turkey, which was leading the labor unions seeking to stage
the protest in Taksim Square.
Police
seized eight handmade explosives, a large number of Molotov cocktails,
slingshots, marbles, banners, hard hats as well as surgical masks and
liquids meant to soothe the effects of tear gas in the back streets of
Taksim, the semiofficial Anadolu News Agency reported.
Taksim
Square carries important resonance in Turkey as a place of protest. In
1977, at least 35 people were killed in May Day celebrations when gunmen
opened fire at protesters. In 1980, the military government declared
May Day celebrations illegal in the square. In 2010, Mr. Erdogan’s
governing Justice and Development Party reopened the square for
celebrations, but then closed it last year during May Day, citing
construction and safety concerns.
The
initial spur for the demonstrations in June 2013 was a plan to replace a
well-loved park near Taksim Square with a shopping mall project
inspired by an Ottoman-style army barracks. But the protests also
reflected widespread disenchantment with the perceived authoritarianism
of the government, which nevertheless remains popular with its core
conservative constituency.
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