ISTANBUL – Protesters were defiant yesterday despite a growing crackdown and nearly 1 500 arrests as they marked a week since the start of Turkey’s biggest street demonstrations against the rule of president Recep Tayyip Erdogan since 2013. 

The protests erupted on 19 March after the arrest of Istanbul opposition mayor Ekrem Imamoglu as part of a graft and “terror” probe, which his supporters denounced as a “coup”.
Vast crowds have hit the street, daily, defying protest bans in Istanbul and other big cities and the arrests with 1 418 people held up to Tuesday according to official figures.

Those detained include AFP journalist Yasin Akgul, who the Paris-based agency says was doing his job covering the protests.
Erdogan, who has repeatedly denounced the protests as “street terror”, stepped up his attacks on the opposition with a bitter tirade against the main opposition Republican People’s (CHP) party of Imamoglu and its leader Ozgur Ozel.

In a possible shift in tactics, Ozel said the CHP was not calling for another nightly protest yesterday outside the Istanbul mayor office, instead urging people to attend a mega rally on Saturday.
But it was far from certain that angry students, who have taken an increasingly prominent role in the protests and are far from all CHP supporters, would stay off the streets.

Most nights, the protests have turned into running battles with riot police, whose crackdown has alarmed rights groups. But there were no such clashes on Tuesday, AFP correspondents said.
The arrest of Akgul, who was remanded in custody on Tuesday along with six other journalists who were also arrested in dawn raids on Monday, was denounced by rights groups and Agence France – Presse, which said the 35-year-old’s jailing was “unacceptable” and demanded his immediate release.

“We are deeply concerned by reports of repression against protesters and journalists in Turkey,” said a French foreign ministry source, asking not to be named, adding that Akgul “was covering the protests professionally”.

Addressing the vast crowds gathered for a seventh straight night at Istanbul City Hall, Ozel said the crackdown would only strengthen the protest movement.
“There is one thing that Mr Tayyip should know: our numbers won’t decrease with the detentions and arrests; we will grow and grow and grow!” he vowed. 

– Nampa/AFP