Thousands of people took to the streets of Istanbul overnight on Sunday, erecting barricades and starting bonfires, after riot police used teargas and water cannons to clear the protest camp at the centre of Turkey's anti-government unrest.
In a night of chaotic violence large areas of the city around the now symbolic area of Gezi Park were engulfed in plumes of tear gas, while protesters opposed to the government of Turkey's prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan attempted to push back to the city's central Taksim Square. The continuing protest through the night, and calls for fresh demonstrations at 4pm on Sunday suggested that despite the clearing of the encampment in the park, Turkey's crisis was far from over.
In the immediate aftermath of the police operation trade unionists called for a national strike on Monday.
Underlining how deeply personal the issue has become for Erdogan, a spokesman for his AKP party blamed the protesters for allegedly reneging on a deal with Erdogan thrashed out two nights before. "A country's prime minister meets you for 10 hours, you reach an agreement then say something else behind his back," Huseyin Çelik said in a TV interview defending the assault. "Wouldn't you feel cheated?" he told the private broadcaster Habertürk.
The lightning evening assault on the park and nearby square followed a warning from Erdogan that protesters should quit Gezi Park or be removed by security forces ahead of a rally of his supporters in Istanbul on Sunday.
Protesters took to the streets in several neighbourhoods across Istanbul following the raid on Gezi Park, ripping up metal fences, paving stones and advertising hoardings to build barricades and lighting bonfires of rubbish in the streets. During the raid police fired tear gas against the volunteer doctors manning a clinic in the park who have been working anonymously for fear of losing their jobs.
In the early hours of the morning groups of demonstrators blocked a main highway to Ataturk airport on the western edge of the city, while to the east, police fired tear gas to block protesters attempting to cross the main bridge crossing the Bosphorus waterway towards Taksim.
Thousands more rallied in the working-class Gazi neighbourhood, which saw heavy clashes with police in the 1990s, while protesters also gathered in Ankara around the central Kugulu Park, including opposition MPs who sat in the streets in an effort to prevent the police firing teargas... read more:
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