Hundreds held as Turkey protest violence spirals

Protesters and police today clashed on the streets of Istanbul in some of the worst violence over the last few days.

Police were reported to have fired tear gas into a group of demonstrators in an area close to Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s offices. The protesters responded by hurling stones.

The private Dogan news agency said as many as 500 protesters were detained overnight after police broke up a protests by several thousands of people in the capital Ankara. Turkey’s Fox television reported 300 others detained in a similar crackdown in Izmir, Turkey’s third largest city.

The demonstrations that grew out of anger over excessive police force on a peaceful environmental protest have spiralled into Turkey’s biggest anti-government rallies for years.

Overnight, protesters in the Besiktas district of Istanbul tore up paving stones to build barricades, and police responded with tear gas and water cannon.

Officials say more than 1,700 people have been arrested in demonstrations in 67 towns and cities, though many have since been released.

The protests may have been started by the destruction of a small Istanbul park, but they have exploded in a show of defiance at what many see as the creeping authoritarianism of Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan.

In power for more than a decade, Erdogan’s AK Party has increased its share of the vote in each of the past three elections, ushered in unprecedented political stability and overseen some of the fastest economic growth in Europe.

But Erdogan, now in his last term as prime minister, has been accused of growing increasingly authoritarian, controlling the press, tightening his party’s grip on state institutions and putting religion at the centre of politics in violation of Turkey’s secular constitution.

Erdogan accused the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) of stoking the demonstrations, while other government officials warned the unrest was a plot to set the ground for a military intervention.