Thousands March In Ankara, Istanbul;
Police Attacks Protesters, Call For Mass Demonstration
By Countercurrents.org
16 June, 2013
Countercurrents.org
Thousands of people took to the streets of Ankara and Istanbul to express support to the protests, and the protesters have announced that they would stay at Istanbul’s Gezi Park. They have called for a demonstration to commemorate their fallen comrades while police launched fierce attacks on protesters in Istanbul and Ankara.
The Confederation of Public Workers' Unions (KESK), a leading public-sector union alliance, said it would call a nationwide strike on Monday while another union grouping is deciding whether to join the action.
Meanwhile, on June 15, 2013, riot police assaulted Gezi Park shortly after a concert attended by protesters and tourists. Police issued a 15-minutes notice to clear the park and the Taksim Square before storming the protest camp.
The lightning speed of the move to seize the square and park caught protesters by surprise. They were scattered by teargas and rubber bullets. Within 20 minutes a bulldozer moved in to demolish structures and tents used by the protesters. A little later police and municipal workers tore down fences around the park. Children and tourists were caught up in the assault amid reports of many injuries.
Then, thousands of people took to the streets, erecting barricades and starting bonfires across nearby streets.
Witnesses said it was one of the worst nights of unrest since the park was occupied 18 days ago.
Clashes then erupted around the city, with protesters ripping up paving stones and tearing down fences to use as barricades. In some areas they chanted: "Tayyip resign."
Local television footage showed groups of demonstrators blocking a main highway to Ataturk airport on the western edge of the city while to the east, several hundred walked towards a main bridge crossing the Bosphorus waterway towards Taksim.
Police chased protesters to hotels and cafes including hundreds in the Divan hotel, which was stormed by police. Police stormed the hotel beating protesters while a later assault left the lobby of the luxury hotel thick with gas. The Observer saw two elderly women who had passed out being carried out on stretchers to an ambulance.
Some activists claimed medical facilities were targeted with water cannon and tear gas. Ambulances were seen entering the park following the police assault.
Social media users have reported that many injured were attended by doctors and volunteers all around the Taksim Square.
Police also fired tear gas against the volunteer doctors, the general secretary of the Turkish Medical Chamber Ali Çerkezoğlu said via Twitter. “Turkey will live its darkest night if this attack lasts for more than one hour,” he also said in a televised interview.
Thousands more rallied in the working-class Gazi neighborhood while protesters also gathered in Ankara around the central Kugulu Park.
But despite quickly taking control of the park, running battles between police and thousands of protesters, driven back into the warren of side streets beside the square, carried on for hours afterwards.
At one stage a bearded middle-aged man draped himself over the plough of one of the water cannons to try to prevent it moving forwards before he was beaten back by batons and gas.
NUT executive member Martin Powell-Davies was part of a British trade union delegation that had approached the fringes of the square as police moved in. He said: "There was a concert by a well-known musician with hundreds of people and families in a festival atmosphere in the square and then suddenly from all sides the police came with water cannons and teargas."
He struggled to speak as he choked on teargas and protesters regrouped to chant anti-government slogans.
He said: "There are hundreds of Istanbul residents who have come out on to the streets to show their opposition. They are banging the shutters in protest at the sides of the streets."
Police encircle Divan hotel
Protesters sang the national anthem in a bid to prevent police attack on the Divan hotel.
Amnesty International’s Turkey Director Murat Çekiç said that police tried to break the doors of the Divan Hotel. Injured people tried to reach the upper floors, he added. A few minutes after, live footage showed police encircling the building and throwing tear gas inside the doors of the hotel.
The Taksim Solidarity Platform, which launched the protests two weeks ago, had called for a mass meeting on Sunday.
The Taksim Solidarity Platform that represents the Gezi Park protesters has condemned the brutal police crackdown on the Taksim Square, adding that hundreds of people were injured and many had been detained. The platform also contradicted the officials’ statements that said that 44 people were injured, adding that Istanbul’s governor “had lost all credibility.” It also said that police showed a “warlike violence” during the attack.
“There are dozens of injured shot with rubber bullets or who couldn’t go to the hospital,” the platform said in a statement today adding that infirmaries set up at Divan hotel which stands near the Gezi Park.
“The attack with rubber bullets, intense tear gas and stun grenades at a moment when there were a lot of women, kids and elderly people were at the park is a crime against humanity,” the statement said.
The Taksim Solidarity Platform called on the end of police intervention that was underway nearly six hours after the evacuation of the park. “The brutal attack of the security forces should be stopped. The government will be the sole responsible of what will happen today and tomorrow,” the platform said.
The platform also appealed for letting the injured to be provided help by doctors. “[Police] should stop preventing the works of volunteer doctors,” it also added.
“This attack that took place at a moment when there was no demonstration at the park shows that the prime minister’s intention is to increase the social polarization and satisfy his ambition of authority by oppressing his people,” the statement also said.
Police use tear gas against crowd trying to cross the Bosphorus Bridge
As thousands in Istanbul gathered on the streets in several districts of the city to march to Taksim Square, hours after the muscled evacuation of Gezi Park, police used tear gas in many areas to quell the crowd. Police intervened on one of the city's arterial roads against protesters at the Asian side who had gathered in an attempt to cross the Bosphorus Bridge on foot in the direction of Taksim Square. Many drivers in cars have been severely affected by the intense tear gas.
Earlier, another group of protesters had gathered at the Kadıköy district to walk in the direction of the bridge. People had joined the protesters from their houses, banging pots to make noise while cars on the road sounded their horns. Police intervened against the group, barring the road to prevent the protesters reaching the bridge. The security forces also called on them to continue demonstrations on Bağdat Avenue, the commercial street of the Asian side, where many also gathered following the crackdown in Taksim. Clashes later broke out at Fikirtepe area between as police used tear gas to quell protesters.
Many protesters also gathered on the European side in neighborhoods such as Etiler, Bakırköy and Mecidiyeköy, walking on the arterial roads disrupting the car traffic. Clashes broke out between police and protesters near Mecidiyeköy and spread to the side streets of the centric neighborhood.
People in the Gazi neighborhood also gathered in the streets.
Main opposition deputies stage sit-in in Ankara
A group of six deputies from the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) have staged a sit-in June 15 to prevent the police’s intervention against thousands of protesters that had gathered in Ankara after the heavy-handed evacuation of Istanbul’s Gezi Park triggered an outcry across the country.
CHP deputy group chair Emine Ülker Tarhan and other five deputies stayed more than two hours and negotiated with the police assuring them that the protesters would not throw objects.
Tension was already high in Ankara where police had intervened for sixth consecutive days as 30 people had been taken in custody on June 14. Outrage had peaked yesterday following another brutal crackdown to Istanbul’s Gezi Park and hours of clashes between the police and peaceful protesters across the city.
Gezi: A symbol
“For those who ask what we will do, we say clearly that we won’t leave Gezi Park that has become a symbol. The question of how we will stay and the steps that will be made from now on will be decided by those who have made great efforts for this place,” the platform said in a statement.
Most of the groups of the 116 organizations that form the Taksim Solidarity Platform had also agreed to pursue the demonstration with one sole and common tent. The protesters who set up their own tents would make their own decisions about whether or not to stay at the park.
Social media users shared the platform’s call for Sunday’s demonstration with the hashtag “a million tomorrow to Taksim” in Twitter, after the Erdoğan gave one day to the protesters to evacuate the park. In another U-turn, Erdoğan warned during a mass rally in Ankara that police would intervene if the park was not evacuated.
The platform called for the release of the arrested as well as the investigation of those responsible for the violent police crackdowns.
“The pre-condition was not the ending of this struggle, but its amplification. It is out of the question that in a climate in which everybody is forced to obey, the social sensibility that made its print on the fate of the country could be directed from above,” said a statement of the Taksim Solidarity Platform.
Representatives of the Platform, who had a meeting with Erdoğan on June 13, informed the protesters at the park about the content of the discussions. The protesters debated throughout the night their next move in seven different discussion forums to reach a common decision.
After deciding to pursue their sit-in despite the government’s assurance the Gezi protesters agreed to remove barricades around the site as well as all political banners from the park.
Demonstrators have accused Erdogan's government of becoming increasingly authoritarian and of trying to impose conservative Islamic values on a secular state.
German Greens co-chair affected by tear gas
German Green Party co-chair Claudia Roth, who was at the surroundings of the Taksim Square when the police intervened to evacuate the Gezi Park, has been affected by the tear gas.
Roth took shelter like many protesters at the Divan hotel. Doctors and volunteers gave the first aid to protesters affected by the intense tear gas.
The German politician was significantly affected by tear gas and received medical attention.
The hotel was encircled by the police who fired tear gas inside its doors. Many protesters were reported to be severely injured. Ambulances were seen picking injured and unconscious people.
"It was like war," Roth told the German private broadcaster ZDF after the police raid to Gezi Park. "I am a living witness. They fired tear gas without sparing women and children," she said.
Crime against humanity
The police’s brutal operation against the Gezi Park protesters is a crime against humanity, the main opposition party’s leader has said, accusing prime minister Erdoğan of intending “to kill Turkey”.
Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, head of the Republican People’s Party (CHP) called on all civil servants not to obey Erdoğan’s unlawful orders.
“Prime minister Erdoğan is intending to kill Turkey because of his dictator mentality and personal ambition. Enforcing the orders of a prime minister who would not hesitate to drag these people into war, constitute a crime according to international norms,” Kılıçdaroğlu said in a written statement.
The police’s operation is the reflection of inhuman and systematic torture on the streets, Kılıçdaroğlu said, adding that Saturday’s move by the police was not only a crime of democracy but a crime against humanity. “Those who committed this crime will never be forgiven by the people, the history and humanity’s conscience,” he said, and urged civil servants to be aware that they would be counted as Erdoğan’s partners in crime and would one day be taken before the court.
“I call my people: The most important power you have in this resistance is your rightness and peacefulness. You are right and strong. You should know that the world’s common humanity conscience is proud of you.”
Source: The Guardian, The Observer, Doğan News Agency, daily Radikal,
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