{"id":38494,"date":"2013-06-03T05:56:14","date_gmt":"2013-06-03T04:56:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/breaking-news\/mass-protests-shake-turkish-government\/38494\/"},"modified":"2013-06-03T05:56:14","modified_gmt":"2013-06-03T04:56:14","slug":"mass-protests-shake-turkish-government","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/breaking-news\/mass-protests-shake-turkish-government\/","title":{"rendered":"Mass protests shake Turkish government"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

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\n By
\n Alex Lantier
\n
3 June 2013
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Protests in cities across Turkey shook the Islamist government of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Friday and over the weekend, amid rising discontent with his domestic policies and his support for the US-led proxy war in neighboring Syria.<\/p>\n

The protests grew rapidly after police crackdowns on Friday morning at Istanbul\u2019s Gezi Park and then on Taksim Square. The sit-in had begun Tuesday, as lawmakers and officials of the Kurdish Peace and Democracy Party (BDP), subsequently joined by the bourgeois opposition Republican People\u2019s Party (CHP), protested Erdogan\u2019s plan to remodel Gezi Park, which is adjacent to Taksim Square. The sit-in initially gathered dozens and then hundreds of people.<\/p>\n

Erdogan plans to build a mosque in the area and to rebuild an Ottoman Empire-era barracks, destroyed in 1940, to be used as a shopping center, while destroying a nearby cultural center named after Turkish bourgeois nationalist leader Kemal Atat\u00c3\u00bcrk.<\/p>\n

The remodeling plans were provocative, given Taksim Square\u2019s historic association with working class or popular protest. The 1969 Bloody Sunday massacre of demonstrators protesting the deployment of the US Sixth Fleet to Turkey took place nearby, and dozens were killed on the square in the repression of an International Labor Day march on May 1, 1977.<\/p>\n

On Friday, police initially cracked down on protesters, pushing them into Taksim Square, and then brutally attacked them again. As the demonstration swelled, helicopters and police squads fired intense volleys of tear gas into residential areas and into the public transit system; one video shows a police armored vehicle hitting a protester as it charged a barricade.<\/p>\n

\u201cPolice are everywhere, and helicopters are monitoring our movements. Whenever police see us march, they come and gas us\u2026 We were gassed, we dispersed, and then gathered again,\u201d one protester said.<\/p>\n

Solidarity protests spread across the country, with thousands gathering in Kugulu Park in Ankara and over 10,000 reported on the marina in Izmir.<\/p>\n

Protesters chanted \u201cEverywhere is Taksim\u201d or \u201cChemical Erdogan\u201d\u2013a reference to the widespread teargasing, but also implicitly criticizing Erdogan\u2019s promotion of false claims that the Syrian regime has used chemical weapons, in order to provide Washington with a pretext to directly attack Syria.<\/p>\n

According to a report by Interior Minister Muammer Guler on Saturday, 939 people had been arrested in over 90 separate demonstrations across the country. Medics reported treating over 1,000 injured protesters in Istanbul, and several hundred in the capital, Ankara. Amnesty International reported that two protesters had been killed.<\/p>\n

On Saturday, tens of thousands of protesters again clashed with police in Istanbul and Ankara, with protesters chanting \u201cshoulder to shoulder against fascism\u201d and \u201cgovernment resign.\u201d<\/p>\n

In a nationally televised speech Saturday, Erdogan endorsed the police crackdown. He said, \u201cTaksim Square can\u2019t be a place where extremist groups hang around,\u201d while cynically admitting to \u201cerrors in the actions of the security forces, especially with regard to the use of pepper gas.\u201d<\/p>\n

He vowed that plans to remodel the park would continue without consulting opposition parties, adding: \u201cWhere they will gather 100,000, I will bring together one million from my party.\u201d<\/p>\n

Police withdrew from Taksim Square late Saturday, however, as state officials tried to bring down popular anger at Erdogan\u2019s violent repression of the protests. The Turkish Interior Ministry announced plans to \u201cinvestigate\u201d excessive use of tear gas, while Turkish President Abdullah G\u00c3\u00bcl called for calm.<\/p>\n

Yesterday tens of thousands of people protested in Turkey\u2019s four largest cities\u2013Istanbul, Ankara, Izmir and Adana. The Interior Minister announced that 1,700 people had been arrested, and that 235 protests took place in 67 Turkish cities.<\/p>\n

The development of mass protests against Erdogan and the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) has rapidly exposed the weakness and unpopularity of his government, as well as the hypocrisy of the pretexts advanced to justify the ongoing US-led war in Syria.<\/p>\n

Washington and its allies seized upon the repression of protests in Syria in the summer of 2011 to launch a proxy war for regime change in Syria, but they are now merely issuing mild, pro forma criticisms of Erdogan\u2019s bloody crackdown in Istanbul. The US State Department expressed concern in its statement over the number of injuries, while the European Union (EU) said it would \u201ccondemn all excessive and disproportionate use of force.\u201d<\/p>\n

Behind the flagrant contrast in the US and EU reaction stand the imperialist interests driving the policy of the major powers in Syria and Turkey. While the Syrian regime has emerged as an obstacle to the imperialist drive to restructure the Middle East, centered on US-led regime change in oil-rich Iran, Erdogan has functioned as a key US ally.<\/p>\n

Syrian officials pointed to this contradiction, demanding Erdogan\u2019s resignation after his brutal suppression of the protests. On Saturday, Syrian television quoted Syrian Information Minister Omran Zoabi: \u201cThe demands of the Turkish people don\u2019t deserve all this violence. If Erdogan is unable to pursue nonviolent means, he should resign.\u201d Zoabi said Erdogan\u2019s brutal repression of protests showed that he is \u201cdetached from reality.\u201d<\/p>\n

Just over two weeks ago, on May 16, Erdogan met with US President Barack Obama in Washington and held a joint press conference at the White House. The main topics at their meeting were reportedly the war in Syria and US-Turkish economic ties.<\/p>\n

US officials declined to address the hypocrisy of their alliance with the bloody Erdogan regime, while pursuing a foreign policy based around a supposedly \u201chumanitarian\u201d war in Syria.<\/p>\n

US Ambassador to Turkey Francis Ricciardone told CNN T\u00c3\u00bcrk, \u201cOf course, no one could be happy to see those saddening images. I am not happy either. I wish a speedy recovery to all those injured. But if you are asking me about US foreign policy, as you know, freedom of expression, freedom of expression, freedom of assembly, and the right to have peaceful protests are fundamentals of a democracy. I am not going to say anything further.\u201d<\/p>\n

Erdogan has enthusiastically backed the Syrian war, in defiance of mass opposition in Turkey. Only one-quarter of the Turkish population supports Erdogan\u2019s policy of arming the far-right Islamist opposition fighting the Syrian regime, according to recent polls.<\/p>\n

There is deep disquiet in Turkey\u2013particularly among the Alevi minority, many of whose members attended the protests\u2013over the consequences in Turkey of Erdogan\u2019s collaboration with the far-right Sunni Islamist opposition in Syria. CHP officials have already charged that the recent car bombing in Reyhanli, Turkey was carried out by Al Nusra, an Al Qaeda-affiliated element of the US-backed Syrian opposition (See: \u201cReports suggest Syrian opposition involvement in Turkish bombings<\/a>\u201d).<\/p>\n

The Erdogan government blamed the attacks on the Syrian government, further raising the danger of war. These charges have since been exposed as lies, as Turkish hacker group RedHack published Turkish intelligence documents showing that cars involved in the Reyhanli car bombing were being prepared for operations by Al Nusra.<\/p>\n

The Erdogan regime has responded by cracking down on the leak. Turkey\u2019s Interior Ministry has confirmed that a member of a gendarmerie unit who allegedly provided the document to RedHack has been detained.<\/p>\n

Erdogan\u2019s increasingly right-wing Islamist legislation in Turkey also is affecting daily life in the country and provoking opposition. Last week, the parliament approved legislation banning the sale and consumption of alcoholic beverages between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m.<\/p>\n


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This article originally appeared on: World Socialist Web Site<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0 By Alex Lantier 3 June 2013 Protests in cities across Turkey shook the Islamist government of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Friday and over the weekend, amid rising discontent with his domestic policies and his support for the US-led proxy war in neighboring Syria. The protests grew rapidly after police crackdowns on Friday […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[487],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-38494","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-breaking-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38494","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38494"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38494\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38494"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38494"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38494"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}