ISTANBUL: Thousands of protesters returned to the streets of Istanbul on Tuesday after a week of the biggest protests to hit Türkiye in over a decade, defying a crackdown that has seen almost 1,500 arrested.
The demonstrations erupted after the arrest of the mayor of Istanbul Ekrem Imamoglu, the main political rival of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, in a move opposition supporters see as a blatant violation of the rule of law.
The authorities have hit back with a crackdown that has alarmed rights groups, with seven journalists who covered the protests remanded in custody by an Istanbul court on Tuesday.
Among them was AFP photographer Yasin Akgul, drawing a sharp rebuke from the Paris-based news agency.
“His imprisonment is unacceptable. This is why I am asking you to intervene as quickly as possible to obtain the rapid release of our journalist,” the agency’s CEO and chairman Fabrice Fries said in a letter to the Turkish presidency.
The court charged Akgul, 35, and the others with “taking part in illegal rallies and marches,” though Fries said Akgul was “not part of the protest” but only covering it as a journalist.
Media freedom group Reporters Without Borders (RSF) denounced the decision as “scandalous,” with its Türkiye representative Erol Onderoglu saying it “reflects a very serious situation in Turkiye.”
Vast crowds have defied a protest ban to hit the streets daily since the Mar. 19 arrest of Imamoglu, with the unrest spreading across Türkiye and prompting nightly clashes with security forces.
In the face of the biggest protests in Türkiye since the 2013 Gezi uprising over the redevelopment of an Istanbul park, Erdogan has remained defiant, denouncing the rallies as “street terror.”
“Those who spread terror in the streets and want to set fire to this country have nowhere to go. The path they have taken is a dead end,” Erdogan, who has now ruled the NATO member for a quarter of a century, said on Tuesday.
But as he spoke thousands of students marched through the Sisli district of Istanbul, whose mayor Resul Emrah Sahan was jailed in the same case as Imamoglu, heading for the district’s municipal headquarters.
They chanted “government, resign!” and waved flags and banners with slogans including “Tayyip resign!” as a large deployment of riot police watched, while people in apartments above bashed pots to show their approval.
Many had their faces covered with scarves or masks, and acknowledged they feared being identified by the police.
“We can’t express ourselves freely,” a student who gave her name as Nisa told AFP, saying she nonetheless joined the protest “to defend democracy.”
Separately, thousands also rallied for the seventh straight night in a protest organized by Imamoglu’s Republican People’s Party (CHP) in the Sarachane district, home of the Istanbul city hall that Imamoglu ran since 2019.
Girding for what could be a long standoff, CHP leader Ozgur Ozel called a mass rally for Saturday in Istanbul that he said would be the “largest open-air referendum in history” and would press for early elections.
“Are you ready for a big rally in a large square in Istanbul on Saturday to support Imamoglu, to object to his arrest, to demand transparent, open trials, to say we have had enough and we want early elections?” Ozel asked protesters, telling them the rally would be held in the vast Maltepe grounds on the Asian side of Istanbul.
In a possible change of tactics to focus efforts on Saturday’s rally, he said he would not call for another Sarachane protest on Wednesday.
With riot police using water cannon, pepper spray and rubber bullets against protesters, the Council of Europe denounced a “disproportionate” use of force while Human Rights Watch said it was a “dark time for democracy” in Türkiye.
The United Nations also voiced alarm at Türkiye’s use of mass detentions and its “unlawful blanket ban on protests,” urging the authorities to probe any unlawful use of force.
By Tuesday, police had detained 1,418 suspects for taking part in “illegal demonstrations,” Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya wrote on X, warning there would be “no concessions” for those who “terrorize the streets.”
But Ozel told the Sarachane crowd: “We do not decrease in numbers with arrests — there will be even more of us.”
He added the extent of the crackdown was such that there was “no room left in Istanbul prisons.”