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Turkey Unrest:PM Erdogan wants to drown out the other 50 percent / Breaking News

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Turkey’s Prime Minister Erdogan does not listen to anti-government protests, and threatened protesters said ” You stop all actions otherwise we can talk language you can understand ” .

In Turkey, there are always at least two truths. On Taksim Square in Istanbul, and on the streets of many other cities in 77 of Turkey’s 81 provinces, the prevailing truth is that Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan is curtailing civil rights, governing in an autocratic manner and is trying to force his conservative religious values on the population.

That is the truth motivating tens of thousands of demonstrators to take to the streets for six days, despite tear-gas and truncheon attacks by police. The Turkish Medical Association (TTB) estimates that three people have died and more than 4,000 have been wounded during the protests. There are no reliable figures regarding the number of arrests.

Unrest Continues In Turkey With Anti Government Protests
Unrest Continues In Turkey With Anti Government Protests

But there is another truth in Kasimpasa, the former dockyard area of Istanbul where Erdogan grew up, and in other more religious parts of the city and in villages throughout the country. In these areas the prevailing truth is that rioters, who have possibly been incited by opposition leaders and foreigners, are running wild and wrecking the cities, waging a campaign against Islam and vilifying the lone politician deserving of praise. The police, in this view, are only reacting so brutally because they are forced to.

Members of Erdogan’s base live in these areas. They make up the 50 percent of Turkish voters who bestowed a victory on his Justice and Development Party (AKP) two years ago. In fact, the party won a share of the vote almost twice as large as that of the biggest opposition party, the center-left Republican People’s Party (CHP).

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Erdogan has viewed this victory as a mandate for governing in any way he deems fit. Whether it has to do with a new shopping mall or the peace process with the Kurds, he calls the shots. As the protests have grown larger, Erdogan has even claimed that he has only been able to restrain his 50 percent with difficulty. It is a rather blatant threat — and a dangerous one, as well.

Turkey Unrest:PM Erdogan challenged the anti-government protesters

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Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan, was meanwhile addressing supporters elsewhere in the city, calling on them to prepare for pro-government rallies next weekend in Istanbul and Ankara.

“On Saturday, are you ready for a big Ankara meeting? … The next day we will have the Istanbul meeting,” Erdogan said to cheering crowds in Ankara, as riot police moved in against protesters.

On Sunday, Erdogan held a string of pro-government rallies across the country.

Erdogan remained defiant over the ongoing protests, again calling the protesters “marauders” and urging the supporters of his Justice and Development Party (AKP) to “teach them a lesson” at the next local polls as he spoke in the southern Turkish city of Adana.

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“Those now at Taksim, those who burn and destroy, those at various places across the country, I ask them, in the name of which freedom are you doing this?” Erdogan said in a speech at the Mediterranean Games in Mersin.

“There is an end to our patience,” Erdogan warned in Ankara airport, as the massive crowd of his supporters chanted slogans like “We are ready die for you, Tayyip!”

The Taksim protesters do not represent all the people of Turkey, the prime minister argued.

“Are the people only those at Gezi Park? Aren’t those who came to meet us at Istanbul airport people too? Those who are gathered now in Ankara; aren’t they people, too?” he exclaimed.

Erdogan said ” But none of them, not trying to use one set to another, or if you continue in the same way ı have to talk to language you can understand. Patience is also because it has an end.

On Saturday night, a rally in the Turkish capital which started peacefully was also dispersed with tear gas and water cannons. According to witness reports on Twitter police were targeting and detaining “random” youths in the crowd. At least three arrests were reportedly made.

Authorities deployed over 4,000 riot police to quell the unrest, witnesses claim.

Unrest Continues In Turkey With Anti Government Protests

In Istanbul, a massive crowd packed the whole of Taksim Square was joined by the fans from rival football teams Fenerbahce, Besiktas and Galatasaray, AFP reports. Police kept away from the scene. In the city’s western Gazi neighborhood things did not go so peacefully as protesters hurled incendiary devices and taunted police, which resulted in fresh clashes.

The problem is that Erdogan has come to see any criticism as an attack, every attempt to have a say in decision-making as illegitimate interference and each protest as an act of sabotage. He has critical journalists and artists placed under suspicion of terrorism. In fact, in the most recent ranking on press freedom compiled by Reporters Without Borders, Erdogan’s Turkey dropped to 154th out of 179 places and now ranks below Iraq and Russia.

Nevertheless, opinion pollsters say that Erdogan would win if a new election were to be held. But they note that one probable reason for this is the desperate situation of the opposition.

“The CHP can’t be allowed to take power,” says a 29-year-old Turkish-German woman on Taksim Square who has been exposed to tear gas in recent nights. She hopes that the protests will result in a new party or electoral alliance because, as she puts it: “With 50 percent, you can’t carry out a revolution.”

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