A heavy-handed police crackdown on Turkish protesters marking the one-year anniversary of deadly anti-government demonstrations earned Ankara a strong rebuke from the Council of Europe yesterday.
“I condemn the excessive use of force by the Turkish police against demonstrators and journalists,” Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights Nils Muiznieks said in a statement.
Saturday’s “events add to the list of cases in which the handling of demonstrations in Turkey has raised serious human rights concerns,” he added.
Photo: AFP
Police clashed with protesters in Istanbul, firing tear gas and water cannon at people clustered on side streets, defying a government ban on demonstrations on the iconic Taksim Square — the epicenter of last year’s turmoil.
About 25,000 police officers were deployed in Istanbul alone, as well as dozens of armored vehicles and water cannon trucks, as police helicopters hovered above.
In Ankara, police also clashed with protesters hurling fireworks and responded with water cannon.
Minor clashes ocurred in both cities overnight, but most protests died down after activist group Taksim Solidarity announced late on Saturday that the demonstrations were over.
Calm appeared to return yesterday.
Abdulbaki Boga, of the Human Rights Association, told reporters at least 83 people were detained and 14 people were injured in Istanbul alone.
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan had warned activists to keep away from Taksim Square, saying authorities were under strict orders to prevent protests.
In May and June last year, hundreds of thousands of Turks took to the streets denouncing Erdogan’s increasingly autocratic leadership and demanding more democratic freedoms. The protests were sparked by opposition to government plans to uproot trees at Taksim Square’s Gezi Park and build a shopping center.
Fanned by outrage over the often brutal reaction by police, the demonstrations soon spread to other cities and developed into Turkey’s biggest protests in decades.
Thousands were wounded and at least 12 people have died in anti-government protests in the past year.
Ahead of the protests, CNN correspondent Ivan Watson said he was detained briefly during a live broadcast.
Turkey’s association of journalists condemned his detention and called the police action “shameful.”
A report last week by the Paris-based International Federation for Human Rights said that more than 5,600 demonstrators were being prosecuted for involvement in the protests while no one responsible for the violence against protesters had been sentenced.
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