The demonstrators were back on the street on Wednesday when they have marked a week since the start of Turkey's largest demonstrations against the rule of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan since 2013.
The demonstrations broke out after the arrest of March 19 of the mayor of the opposition of Istanbul, Ekrem Imamoglu, as part of an investigation of transplant and “terror”, which the main opposition Party CHP slammed as a “coup”.
Vast crowds hit the streets daily, defying a prohibition of protest in Istanbul and in other major cities, the largest crowds gathering after nightfall, triggering racing battles with the riot police.
Before a major rally on Saturday, the CHP seemed to change its strategy on Wednesday, urging people to applaud, to tide their horns or waves from their windows to 1730 GMT.
In Istanbul, crowds of students – many of whom have hidden – walked in the business district after a day when several thousands had flooded the streets while singing: “The government resigns!”
And in the capital, students gathered on the campus of the University of Ankara alongside medical students from Haceteppe University and a handful of speakers from the prestigious technical university of the Middle East.
“The pressures exerted on the members of the opposition reached an alarming level,” said a lecturer in a dress who did not give his name.
“In the same way, government pressure on universities, which has lasted for years, has become even worse with recent developments.”
– “absolutely scandalous” –
Tuesday afternoon, police arrested 1,418 people, said the Interior Ministry.
Among them, AFP photographer Yasin Akgul was arrested on Monday during a raid before dawn and placed in detention a day later alongside six other journalists.
This decision was strongly denounced by the Paris -based news agency, which said that Akgul had covered the demonstrations, denouncing his imprisonment as “unacceptable” and demanding his immediate release.
Journalists without borders Thibaut Bruttin described arrests as “absolutely scandalous”, urging Turkey to release journalists, including Akgul.
“These journalists were only doing their job. They have nothing to do in court. They must absolutely be released,” he told AFP.
And a source from the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs said that Paris was “deeply concerned about repression reports against demonstrators and journalists” in Turkey, noting that Kgul “covered the demonstrations professionally”.
The UN also expressed its concern on Wednesday against the Tour of the Court on the fate of journalists.
“It is a question of concern that the initial decisions of a court of Istanbul would have been immediately informed by the intervention of the prosecutor,” the spokesperson for the Human Rights Office, Liz Throssell, told AFP.
– “There is no room in prisons” –
Erdogan, who has repeatedly denounced demonstrations like “Street Terror”, intensified his attacks against the opposition with a bitter tirade against the CHP and his chief Ozgur Ozel.
Most of the nights, the demonstrations have turned into battles with the riot police, whose repression alarmed rights groups.
But there were no such clashes on Tuesday, AFP correspondents said.
Addressing the vast crowd at the town hall of Istanbul on Tuesday, Ozel warned Erdogan that the repression would only strengthen the protest movement.
“Our figures will not decrease with detentions and arrests, we will grow and grow and grow!” He swore, saying that the extent of the repression meant that there was “no more room in the prisons of Istanbul”.
Although repression has not reduced the figures, most of the students who joined a huge street rally on Tuesday had a covered face, said an AFP correspondent.
“We want the government to resign, we want our democratic rights, we are fighting for a freer turkey at the moment,” a 20 -year -old who gave his name as Mali to AFP.
“We are not terrorists, we are students and the reason why we are here is to exercise our democratic rights and defend democracy,” he said.
Ozel called the next major rally for Saturday in the district of Istanbul of Maltepe on the Asian side of the city.
BUR-HMW / BC
