World Press on May Day protests in Turkey (May 2, 2013)

Financial Times published yesterday the article “Turkish police use teargas to prevent May Day demonstration”. The article by the FT special correspondent in Istanbul discusses in detail the measures taken by the Turkish authorities and their consequences. “Turkey raised bridges, banned boat traffic and sent police with teargas and water cannon to try to stop a May Day demonstration being held in Istanbul’s main square.The move brought much of Istanbul to a standstill, with police and stone-wielding protesters engaged in street-to-street skirmishes in the city centre as international hotels advised guests not to venture outside,” the article reads. “While Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey’s prime minister, insisted that the measures were for the demonstrators’ own safety, many of the marchers – who included members of the country’s main opposition party, as well as leftwing organisations and unions, accused Ankara of an authoritarian clampdown on its political opponents. The government said it was unsafe to allow May Day demonstrators to assemble in Taksim Square, the symbolic heart of Istanbul and the city’s traditional rallying point, because of building work to remodel and pedestrianise the square,” the article reports. “If there were a provocation . . . during the rally, could we bear the death of even one person?” the correspondent quotes Mr Erdogan.“But his opponents allege that the plans for Taksim, which include a mosque and a shopping mall, are themselves intended to prevent the square from being used for demonstrations. The square has particular significance for the Turkish left, because of events on May Day 1977, when 34 demonstrators were killed. May Day rallies were subsequently banned from Taksim although they were permitted for past three years,” the article explains.“They are trying to take Taksim from us,” said a demonstrator called Baris, as he clambered up a street away from the teargas. “We want to get to Taksim, but it is not possible, as you can see, as you can breathe,” the protesters are quoted.The author points out that “the confrontation between the Islamist-rooted government and its traditional secular opponents over May Day contrasts with Mr Erdogan’s initiative to solve the country’s Kurdish problem through dialogue. The outlawed Kurdistan Workers party, or PKK, announced last week that it was pulling its fighters out of Turkey. But Mr Erdogan’s detractors said even the contacts with the PKK show the prime minister’s high-handed approach, since the government has announced few details of the talks. Some polls indicate that many Turks are deeply opposed to the negotiations”.“Mr Erdogan’s supporters counter that several protests have been violent, at a time when the political temperature is rising, because of the talks as well as Mr Erdogan’s own ambitions to become Turkey’s first directly elected president. A high-profile trial into an alleged plot against the government was disrupted last month as demonstrators clashed with police. A nationalist party leader is also being investigated by prosecutors over comments he made at a March rally against the talks with the PKK. As the crowd chanted: ‘Tell us to fight and we will fight; tell us to die and we will die,” Devlet Bahceli, the leader of the Nationalist Movement party, said the appropriate time would soon come,” the article concludes.