Nice and sanitised

Meanwhile, this is how the corporate presstitutes report it

Turkish forces clear Istanbul park

CNN,

15 June, 2013

Ankara, Turkey (CNN) -- Turkish riot police used water cannons and tear gas Saturday to clear protesters camped out in an Istanbul park that has become ground zero in anti-government demonstrations targeting the policies of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

At least 29 people were injured in clashes as police sealed off Taksim Square and took Gezi Park, Istanbul Gov. Huseyin Avni Mutlu said in remarks carried on Turkish television stations.

Police pushed protesters onto side streets, where on one street many -- with their faces covered with masks because of tear gas and smoke -- appeared to reorganize.

Chanting "long live Taksim solidarity," the demonstrators began moving back toward the square and park. In turn, authorities fired tear gas and a water cannon down the street to try to disperse them.

The move came after police warned demonstrators who have occupied Istanbul's last remaining green space for more than two weeks to depart voluntarily or face being ejected.

Calls for political reforms

The protest that began over Erdogan's plan to turn the park into a mall quickly devolved into large anti-government demonstrations that have seen calls for political reforms.

What's driving unrest and protests in Turkey?

Erdogan, who has been defiant of protest demands, said earlier in the day at a rally with supporters in Ankara that if protesters did not leave on their own, they would be forced out of Gezi Park.

"If it is not emptied, from now on, this country's security forces will know how to empty that place," he said.

A few minutes later, police used loudspeakers to order the protesters out of the park, saying it was their last warning.

But the demonstration continued as the sun began to set, with hundreds of people packing the square, some of them wearing gas masks, others linking arms in solidarity and anticipation.

During his speech, Erdogan said the demonstrators were not meeting him halfway.

"We have reached out with our hands," he said. "However, some people returned their fists in response. Can you shake hands with those who reach out with a fist?"

And he ridiculed the protesters' assertions that they are environmentalists, calling them "thugs" instead, and citing their honking of horns as evidence of their insincerity. "This is called noise pollution," he said.

A dozen of his Justice and Development AK Party buildings have been damaged and burned, he said, accusing "outsiders" of staging the demonstrations.

He accused demonstrators of inciting sectarian violence by attacking a woman who was wearing a headscarf, kicking her, dragging her on the ground and snatching away her head cover. He accused some demonstrators of having entered a mosque while wearing shoes, drunk alcohol there and written insulting slogans on the walls -- acts forbidden by Muslims -- but said authorities had been patient.

Erdogan said the courts will handle such incidents.

He said he did not understand the concerns about the park, since no contracts have been signed and no construction has begun. "There is nothing yet to protest," he said.

'Every kind of hypocrisy'

Erdogan accused social media for spreading misinformation, the national media of lying and the international media of displaying "every kind of hypocrisy" in its reporting, but he expressed gratitude for the crowd's support.

He praised his government's performance over the past 10 years, citing a rising standard of living, a stock market that has broken records, a quintupling of the central bank's reserves, plans to build the world's biggest airport and the construction of a third bridge scheduled to begin carrying traffic in four lanes in either direction over the Bosporus in 2015.

Erdogan said maintaining the park as a green space was not the real goal of most of the demonstrators, four of whom have been arrested.

"What is the issue then?" he asked. "It is to take down the AK Party government."

Except for a few who are genuinely concerned about the environment, the demonstrators are upset about Turkey's growing strength, he said, adding that more than 600 of his police had been wounded in the clashes.

"No one can scare us off," he said.

Erdogan delivered his message to a supportive crowd, amid a carnival atmosphere and heavy police security. During his comments, some of his supporters waved the red-and-white Turkish flag as well as the orange, white and blue flag of Erdogan's AK Party.

The festive mood contrasted sharply with the scene here overnight, when Turkish riot police sprayed rowdy anti-government demonstrators with water cannon and fired tear gas at them, arresting nearly a dozen people in the third consecutive night of clashes in the capital.

Erdogan vs. protesters

The unrest began nearly 500 kilometers (311 miles) away, in Istanbul, nearly three weeks ago, when a small group of people turned out to protest government plans to bulldoze the city's Gezi Park and to replace it with a shopping mall housed inside a replica of a 19th-century Ottoman barracks.

Protesters said the plans represented a creeping infringement on their rights in a secular society.

Turkey was founded after secularists in the early 20th century defeated Islamic Ottoman forces, and many modern-day secularists frown on Ottoman symbols.

The protests broadened into an outpouring in the square and throughout the country as security forces cracked down on demonstrators. The images, seen worldwide on social media and TV, sparked criticism around the world as well as in Turkey, a NATO member and a U.S. ally.

The unrest also signaled political danger for Erdogan, a populist and democratically elected politician serving his third term in office.

Erdogan has been criticized -- even by his allies -- for using heavy-handed tactics in his governance and for trying to impose changes without first seeking public input. The park plan represented the final straw for many Turks, who accuse the government of trying to impose its will whenever and wherever it wants.

On Friday, Erdogan met with protesters in Ankara and then said he would suspend plans to build the mall in Istanbul pending a court decision on the protesters' objections to its construction.

If the judicial ruling is not in line with what Gezi protesters want, a popular vote will be held.

Erdogan also agreed to investigate claims of excessive use of force by police during the protests, some of which have turned violent.

Tayfun Kahraman, a city planner speaking on behalf of the Taksim Solidarity protest movement, thanked Erdogan and his ministers for accepting their demands for a meeting.

"We will closely follow his promises and the process. Unfortunately, four people died in the incidents. We still feel the pain of their death."

Despite conciliatory statements from both sides, protesters defied the pleas of their prime minister and remained encamped Saturday in the park where the demonstrations started 19 days ago

From what I can gather all the violence seems to be from the side of the police and the authorities.

Police raid on Istanbul park triggers night of rioting

Thousands of people took to the streets of Istanbul overnight on Sunday, erecting barricades and starting bonfires, after riot police firing teargas and water cannon stormed a park at the centre of two weeks of anti-government unrest.

Reuters,

16 June, 2013

Lines of police backed by armoured vehicles sealed off Taksim Square in the centre of the city as officers raided the adjoining Gezi Park late on Saturday, where protesters had been camped in a ramshackle settlement of tents.

Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan had warned hours earlier that security forces would clear the square, the centre of more than two weeks of fierce anti-government protests that spread to cities across the country, unless the demonstrators withdrew before a ruling party rally in Istanbul on Sunday.

"We have our Istanbul rally tomorrow. I say it clearly: Taksim Square must be evacuated, otherwise this country's security forces know how to evacuate it," he told tens of thousands of flag-waving supporters at a rally in Ankara.

Protesters took to the streets in several neighbourhoods across Istanbul following the raid on Gezi Park, ripping up metal fences, paving stones and advertising hoardings to build barricades and lighting bonfires of trash in the streets.

Some chanted, "Tayyip, resign."

Local television footage showed groups of demonstrators blocking a main highway to Ataturk airport on the western edge of the city, while to the east, several hundred walked towards a main bridge crossing the Bosphorus waterway towards Taksim.

Thousands more rallied in the working-class Gazi neighbourhood, which saw heavy clashes with police in the 1990s, while protesters also gathered in Ankara around the central Kugulu Park, including opposition MPs who sat in the streets in an effort to prevent the police from firing teargas.

A main public-sector union confederation, KESK, which has some 240,000 members, said it would call a national strike for Monday, while a second union grouping said it was holding an emergency meeting to decide whether to join the action.

"One million people to Taksim" - a call for more anti-government demonstrations later on Sunday - was a top-trending hashtag on Twitter.

"The police brutality aims at clearing the streets of Istanbul to make way for Erdogan's meeting tomorrow," said Oguz Kaan Salici, Istanbul president of the main opposition People's Republican Party.

"Yet it will backfire. People feel betrayed."

CLOUDS OF TEARGAS

A similar police crackdown on peaceful campaigners in Gezi Park two weeks ago provoked an unprecedented wave of protest against Erdogan, drawing in secularists, nationalists, professionals, trade unionists and students who took to the streets in protest at what they see as his autocratic style.

The unrest, in which police fired teargas and water cannon at stone-throwing protesters night after night in cities including Istanbul and Ankara, left four people dead and about 5,000 injured, according to the Turkish Medical Association.

Panicked protesters fled into an upscale hotel at the back of Gezi Park during Saturday night's raid, several of them vomiting, as clouds of teargas and blasts from percussion bombs - designed to create confusion rather than injure - engulfed the park.

"We tried to flee and the police pursued us. It was like war," Claudia Roth, co-chair of Germany's Greens party, who had gone to Gezi Park to show her support, told Reuters.

The Gezi Park protesters, who oppose government plans to build a replica Ottoman-era barracks there, had defied repeated calls to leave but had started to reduce their presence in the park after meetings with Erdogan and the local authorities.

"This is unbelievable. They had already taken out political banners and were reducing to a symbolic presence in the park," Koray Caliskan, a political scientist at Bosphorus University, told Reuters from the edge of Gezi Park.

ERDOGAN DEFIANT

Erdogan told protesters on Thursday that he would put the Gezi Park plans on hold until a court rules on them. It was a softer stance after two weeks in which he called protesters "riff-raff" and said the plans would go ahead regardless.

But at the first of two rallies this weekend by his ruling AK Party, he reverted to a defiant tone, telling supporters on the outskirts of Ankara that he would crush his opponents in elections next year.

The police intervention so soon after Erdogan spoke took many by surprise on a busy Saturday night around Taksim, one of Istanbul's main social hubs, not least after President Abdullah Gul, who has struck a more conciliatory tone than Erdogan, said earlier on Saturday that talks were progressing well.

Erdogan has long been Turkey's most popular politician, his AK Party winning three successive election victories, each time with a larger share of the vote, but his critics complain of increasing authoritarianism.

He has said the AK Party rallies in Ankara and Istanbul are meant to kick off campaigning for local elections next year and are not related to the protests, but they are widely seen as a show of strength in the face of the demonstrations.