Istanbul police on Friday fired tear gas at thousands of women who took to the city’s central avenue on International Women’s Day in defiance of a protest ban to demand greater rights and denounce violence.
Security forces in riot gear pushed the crowds of women at the entrance to the city’s main pedestrianized shopping street Istiklal Avenue.
Police then used tear gas on the marchers and menaced them with dogs, causing many protesters to flee onto side streets.
Photo: Reuters
The event took place peacefully last year, but authorities issued a statement banning any demonstration on the city’s central avenue just before this year’s march.
Ahead of the protest, the area was flooded with police who set up cordons around Taksim Square, while many local shops were closed.
“Here is the bitter truth: There is a system, there is a state that is scared of us. I condemn this,” a woman named Ulker told reporters from behind a barrier.
Thousands of demonstrators were eventually allowed into a small part of the avenue to stage the protest.
They unfurled banners that read “Feminist revolt against male violence and poverty” and “I was born free and I will live free.”
The crowds then became trapped between two security cordons and were subsequently dispersed by the police using tear gas.
Women’s activists have long accused Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s government of not doing enough to stop violence against women.
Last year, 440 women were killed in murders linked to their gender, according to the women’s rights group We Will Stop Femicide, compared with 210 in 2012.
The issue was highlighted on Thursday, when pop singer Sila went to court to accuse her boyfriend Ahmet Kural, a famous actor, of beating her.
The case was a rare instance of a celebrity breaking the silence that surrounds abuse in a conservative society in which patriarchal attitudes are dominant.
“In Turkey, violence against women is very high. The government is doing nothing to stop it. That’s all we can do: to come here and speak up,” protester Gulsah said.
In Ankara, hundreds of people took part in a smaller Women’s Day rallies, whistling, cheering and clapping as they walked and shouting: “We will not be quiet.”
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