Turkish police used tear gas and water cannon to clear protesters from the center of Istanbul ahead of a visit by Prime Minister Erdogan on Sunday. The move has done nothing to quell people’s outrage.
In a full-scale operation on Saturday night (15.06.2013), Turkish riot police in Istanbul moved in to clear both Taksim Square and adjacent Gezi Park, where thousands of demonstrators had been camping out for more than two weeks.
Just hours earlier Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan had given a speech to a crowd of tens of thousands of flag-waving supporters in the capital, Ankara, in which he warned the demonstrators that they had to be gone by Sunday. “Taksim Square must be evacuated, or if it isn’t, the security forces of this country know how to evacuate it,” he said.
Read more: http://www.dw.de/show-of-force-in-istanbul/a-16885917
