Hundreds of Thousands Join Istanbul Protest Rally
AFP/APP
Istanbul: Waving flags and chanting slogans, hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators rallied in Istanbul on Saturday, calling for democracy to be defended following the arrest of Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu. His detention has sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in over a decade.
Under a cloudless blue sky, huge crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration, which begins Sunday, marking the end of Ramadan.
Ozgur Ozel, leader of the main opposition party CHP, which organized the rally, claimed that 2.2 million people attended. However, AFP could not independently verify the figures.
“I’m not scared. I’ve only got one life, and I’m ready to sacrifice it for this country,” said an 82-year-old woman in a headscarf, carrying a picture of Imamoglu and the Turkish flag. She declined to give her name “in case they come knocking at my door.”
“He’s an honest man. He is the one who will save the Turkish republic,” she said, referring to the mayor, who was arrested and jailed over a graft probe on charges widely considered to be politically motivated.
The mass protests, which began after Imamoglu’s March 19 detention, have prompted a harsh government response, drawing condemnation from rights groups and criticism from abroad.
Imamoglu, widely seen as the only Turkish politician capable of challenging President Recep Tayyip Erdogan at the ballot box, was elected as the opposition CHP’s candidate for the 2028 presidential race on the day he was jailed. He was resoundingly re-elected mayor last year for the third time. Anger over his arrest quickly spread from Istanbul across Turkey.
Nightly protests outside Istanbul City Hall have drawn vast crowds and often escalated into clashes with riot police, who used teargas, pepper spray, and rubber bullets to disperse demonstrators.
“We are here today for our homeland. We, the people, elect our rulers,” insisted 17-year-old Melis Basak Ergun, vowing that protesters would never be intimidated “by violence or tear gas.”
“We stand behind our mayor, Imamoglu.”
‘Keep Fighting!’ –
As protesters traveled to the rally, chants of “Everywhere is Taksim, resistance is everywhere!” echoed across ferries crossing the Bosphorus. This was a reference to Istanbul’s iconic Taksim Square, the epicenter of the last massive wave of protests in 2013.
“I joined the rallies outside City Hall for four days alongside university students. I told them not to give in,” said 78-year-old protester Cafer Sungur.
“There is no other way than to keep fighting,” he added. “I was jailed in the 1970s, but back then, there was justice. Today, we can’t talk about justice anymore.”
Among those at the protest were Imamoglu’s wife, Dilek, their children, and his parents, an AFP correspondent reported.
Opposition leader Ozel told French newspaper Le Monde that Saturday’s rallies would now become a weekly event in cities across Turkey, along with a weekly Wednesday night demonstration in Istanbul.
“If we don’t stop this attempted coup, it will mean the end of the ballot box,” he warned.
Student groups have continued their protests despite a police crackdown that has seen nearly 2,000 people arrested. Authorities have also restricted media coverage, arresting 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deporting a BBC correspondent, and jailing a Swedish reporter who flew into Istanbul to cover the unrest.
Eleven journalists were released on Thursday, including AFP photographer Yasin Akgul.
Swedish journalist Joakim Medin, who arrived in Turkey on Thursday to report on the demonstrations, was jailed on Friday, according to his employer, Dagens ETC.
Reporters Without Borders’ Turkey representative, Erol Onderoglu, said Medin was charged with “insulting the president,” a charge frequently used to silence Erdogan’s critics.
“The judicial pressure systematically brought to bear on local journalists for a long time is now being extended to their foreign colleagues,” he told AFP.
Turkish authorities held BBC journalist Mark Lowen for 17 hours on Wednesday before deporting him for allegedly posing “a threat to public order,” according to the broadcaster. Officials claimed the expulsion was due to “a lack of accreditation.”
Baris Altintas, co-director of MLSA, a legal NGO assisting many of the detainees, told AFP that authorities “seem very determined to limit coverage of the protests.”
He added, “We fear that the crackdown on the press will not only continue but also increase.”
