ISTANBUL: Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s AK Party yesterday ruled out early elections as thousands of anti-government demonstrators defied his call for an immediate end to protests.
Huseyin Celik, deputy chairman of the Justice and Development (AK) Party founded by Erdogan just over a decade ago, said local and presidential elections would be held next year as planned, and a general election in 2015.
“The government is running like clockwork. There is nothing that necessitates early elections,” he told reporters after a meeting of the party’s executive committee here. “The world is dealing with an economic crisis and things are going well in Turkey. Elections are not held because people are marching on the streets.”
Celik said the protests had been discussed “in detail” at yesterday’s party meeting, but that the question of early elections had never been on the agenda. “A government that doesn’t have people’s trust cannot be permanent. We got the message of the protests and we respect that, but there’s nothing to respect about people throwing stones,” he said.
A few kilometres away, tens of thousands of Turks defied Erdogan’s call on Friday for an immediate end to anti-government demonstrations, massing again in the central Taksim Square, where riot police backed by helicopters and armoured vehicles first clashed with protesters a week ago.
Tourists and curious locals swelled their numbers around a makeshift protest camp in Gezi Park, a leafy corner of the square where activists have been sleeping in tents and vandalised buses, or wrapped in blankets under trees.
What began as a campaign against government plans to build over the park spiralled into an unprecedented display of public anger over the perceived authoritarianism of Erdogan and his Islamist-rooted AK Party, leading to the worst riots in decades.
In a rare show of unity, thousands of fans from Istanbul’s three main football clubs Besiktas, Galatasaray and Fenerbahce, who have helped organise some of the protests, marched on Taksim roaring “Tayyip resign!” and “Arm in arm against fascism!”.
Police fired teargas and water cannon on protesters overnight in the working-class Gazi neighbourhood of Istanbul, which saw heavy clashes with police in the 1990s. There was similar unrest night after night earlier in the week in several cities, leaving three dead and close to 5,000 injured.
Hundreds of protesters also gathered in the centre of the capital Ankara, which saw violent clashes earlier in the week, chanting and honking car horns. Erdogan has given no indication of plans to clear out Taksim, around which protesters have built dozens of barricades made of ripped up paving stones, street signs, vandalised vehicles and corrugated iron, clogging part of the city centre. Police pulled back from the square days ago.
“Let them attack. They can’t stop us,” a member of the Turkish Communist Party shouted through loudspeakers to a cheering crowd from on top of a white van in the square.
Meanwhile, the Istanbul park whose conservation fight sparked mass protests will not be turned into a shopping mall, the city’s mayor assured protesters, but insisted the site’s controversial redevelopment would go ahead.
“We are definitely not thinking of building a shopping mall there, no hotel or residence either. It can be... a city museum or an exhibition centre,” Istanbul mayor Kadir Topbas told reporters.
Activists have been trying to halt plans to demolish the park to make way for a replica of Ottoman-era military barracks and, some protesters feared, a shopping centre.
A campaign to protect Gezi Park’s 600 trees, the last patch of green in the heart of the Turkey’s largest city, was met with a violent police crackdown last week.
Erdogan has responded with defiance, vowing to press on with the barracks project but leaving open whether the area would become a shopping district.
In a more conciliatory tone, Topbas said the final plans would be made “through dialogue” and “the number of trees can be increased”.
But he stood firm on the overall project: “The plan for the barracks was part of our election promises, the people gave us the authority to do it.”
Representatives for the protesters involved in the environmental campaign rejected the mayor’s olive branch and said they wanted Gezi Park to remain a green open space.
Mucella Yapici, an architect and spokeswoman for the Taksim Platform, criticised the government for pushing ahead with the redevelopment without proper public consultation. “We call on the government not to provoke the people,” she told reporters.
She repeated the group’s list of demands, which include a ban on the use of tear gas against demonstrators and the sacking of police chiefs in cities that saw violent clashes.
The park, next to Istanbul’s main Taksim Square, has become the symbolic heart of the nationwide protest movement and has transformed into a festival-like camp site packed with mostly young demonstrators.
