REPORT: Turkish police clear square as Germany says Ankara sending "wrong signal" on protests

The Turkish government is sending the wrong signal at home and abroad with its reaction to protests, German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle said on Wednesday, describing pictures from Istanbul's central Taksim square as "disturbing".    

Turkish riot police fought running battles with pockets of protesters overnight, clearing the square, which has been at the center of nearly two weeks of protests against Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan.   

"We expect Prime Minister Erdogan to deescalate the situation, in the spirit of European values, and to seek a constructive exchange and peaceful dialogue," Westerwelle said in a statement.        

Earlier, Turkish riot police fought running battles with pockets of protesters overnight, clearing the central Istanbul square that has been the focus of nearly two weeks of protests against Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan.    

By dawn, Taksim Square, strewn with wreckage from bulldozed barricades, was largely deserted and taxis crossed it for the first time since the troubles started. Several hundred remained in an encampment of tents in Gezi Park abutting the square.    

Erdogan, who has repeatedly dismissed the demonstrators as "riff-raff", was expected to meet a grouping of public figures about the protests on Wednesday. In the fighting talk that first endeared him to voters 10 years ago, he said on Tuesday he would not "kneel" before the protesters and that "this Tayyip Erdogan won't change".    

The United States, which has held up Erdogan's Turkey in the past as an example of Muslim democracy that could benefit other countries in the Middle East, expressed concern about events in Turkey and urged dialogue between government and protesters.       

Erdogan, though, has increasingly accused foreign forces and international media and market speculators of stoking conflict and trying to undermine the economy of the only largely Muslim NATO state.    

He has also exerted strong pressure on the media, seven newspapers last week carrying the identical headline citing Erdogan as saying he, not the protesters, guaranteed democracy.    

FIERCE CLASHES    

The night had brought some of the worst clashes since the troubles began. Police fired tear gas into thousands of people gathered on the square, including people in office clothes who had gathered after work, some with families with children.    

The crowd scattered into narrow streets around, leaving a hard core of protesters to return, lighting bonfires and stoning  water cannon. Police then launched tear gas attacks again, the cycle repeating itself until numbers dwindled.    

Police were less in evidence by the morning and it was not clear if protesters would return in the course of the day, as they have previously.   

A fierce crackdown on initial protests against planned redevelopment of Gezi Park, a leafy corner of Taksim, triggered the wider protests, drawing in a broad alliance of secularists, nationalists, professional workers, unionists and students - some of whom would never before have considered sharing a political platform.    

Erdogan argues that the broader mass of people is at best the unwitting tools of political extremists and terrorists and points to his 50 percent vote in the last of three successive electoral victories for his political authority.


REUTERS

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