After a night spent under clouds of police tear gas, protesters in Istanbul’s Gezi Park on Wednesday cleaned up the debris, fortified their encampment, dressed their wounds and said they would stay on. Though Turkey’s government has vowed to end protests it says were co-opted by extremists, the park is home to a colorful group of hundreds of young people at the heart of a bid to save the site from a controversial redevelopment scheme that has led to antigovernment demonstrations nationwide. An uneasy calm reigned over the square, littered with burned-out vans and rubble. Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said the protests would end within 24 hours. “I have given the orders to the Interior Minister,” he told members of a shopkeepers’ union. Riot police moved into Taksim on Tuesday wielding tear gas and water cannons but did not enter the crowded park. Taksim Solidarity, a loose coalition of groups represented in the park, said overnight teargassing had ended any possible dialogue with the government. Erdogan on Wednesday met with a group of protest sympathizers, including an actress and a singer, to discuss the protests, but many demonstrators said that meeting was unrelated to their action. In Gezi Park, protesters continued to make and distribute their own food (supplies arrive daily from hundreds of supporters), run their own infirmary and keep up routines like daily trash collection. At the back of the park, gardeners tended rows of tomatoes and peppers, some trampled earlier as people fled tear gas the previous night. “We came here because of nature, to save the trees,” says Ayse, a volunteer. “This vegetable garden is a symbol of that. The protests are about policies which don’t leave a drop of green space in our cities.” (PHOTOS: Protests Rile Istanbul as Police and Protesters Clash) Gezi is the epicenter of protests that have rocked Turkey over the past two weeks. They began over government plans to raze the park and build an Ottoman barracks cum commercial development in its place. After footage showing trees being uprooted![]()
