Istanbul, Turkey – Protesters were defiant Wednesday despite a growing crackdown and nearly 1,500 arrests as they marked a week since the start of Turkey’s biggest street demonstrations against the rule of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan since 2013.
The protests erupted on March 19 after the arrest of Istanbul opposition mayor Ekrem Imamoglu as part of a graft and “terror” probe, which his supporters denounced as a “coup”.
Vast crowds have hit the street daily, defying protest bans in Istanbul and other big cities and the arrests with 1,418 people held up to Tuesday according to official figures.
Those detained include AFP journalist Yasin Akgul, who the Paris-based agency says was doing his job covering the protests.
Erdogan, who has repeatedly denounced the protests as “street terror”, stepped up his attacks on the opposition with a bitter tirade against the main opposition Republican People’s (CHP) party of Imamoglu and its leader Ozgur Ozel.
In a possible shift in tactics, Ozel said the CHP was not calling for another nightly protest Wednesday outside the Istanbul mayor office, instead urging people to attend a mega rally on Saturday.
But it was far from certain that angry students, who have taken an increasingly prominent role in the protests and are far from all CHP supporters, would stay off the streets.
Most nights, the protests have turned into running battles with riot police, whose crackdown has alarmed rights groups. But there were no such clashes on Tuesday, AFP correspondents said.
‘No room left in Istanbul prisons’
The arrest of Akgul, who was remanded in custody on Tuesday along with six other journalists who were also arrested in dawn raids on Monday, was denounced by rights groups and Agence France – Presse, which said the 35-year-old’s jailing was “unacceptable” and demanded his immediate release.
“We are deeply concerned by reports of repression against protesters and journalists in Turkey,” said a French foreign ministry source, asking not to be named, adding that Akgul “was covering the protests professionally”.
Addressing the vast crowds gathered for a seventh straight night at Istanbul City Hall, Ozel said the crackdown would only strengthen the protest movement.
“There is one thing that Mr Tayyip should know: our numbers won’t decrease with the detentions and arrests, we will grow and grow and grow!” he vowed.
The extent of the crackdown, he said, meant there was “no room left in Istanbul’s prisons”.
Imamoglu also posted a defiant message targeting Erdogan on his social media channels, vowing to “send him away at the ballot box”, accusing the Turkish leader of “staying behind closed doors in Ankara not to govern Turkey but to protect his seat”.
“We will be one… we will succeed,” he added.
Erdogan himself took aim at Ozel in a speech to his party, dismissing the CHP leader as “a politically bankrupt figure whose ambitions and fears have taken his mind captive”.
The CHP, he claimed, had created “too much material even for Brazilian soap operas” with corruption cases in Istanbul municipalities.
‘We are not terrorists’ –
Although the crackdown has not reduced the numbers, most students who joined a huge street rally on Tuesday had their faces covered, an AFP correspondent said.
“We want the government to resign, we want our democratic rights, we are fighting for a freer Turkey right now,” a 20-year-old student who gave his name as Mali told AFP.
“We are not terrorists, we are students and the reason we are here is to exercise our democratic rights and to defend democracy,” he said.
Like most protesters, his face was covered and he refused to give his surname for fear of reprisals.
Another masked student who gave her name as Lydia, 25, urged more people to hit the streets.
“All Turkish people should take to the streets, they are hunting us like vermin (while) you are sitting at home. Come out, look after us! We are your students, we are your future,” she said, her anger evident.
Unlike previous days, the CHP’s Ozel said there would be no rally at City Hall on Wednesday, but called protesters to rally instead on Saturday in the Istanbul district of Maltepe to demand early elections.
