Protests on Istiklal Avenue, the heart of Istanbul’s shopping and entertainment district, are nothing new. Over the past year, Turks have protested against the deteriorating state of press freedoms, a reckless construction boom, a draft law placing new curbs on abortion, the government’s response to the civil war raging in neighboring Syria, the jailing of hundreds of top generals on coup charges, the arrests of thousands of Kurdish activists accused of abetting the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, which Turkey labels a terrorist group, and, most recently, new restrictions on alcohol sales. (PHOTOS: Protests in Istanbul After Police Crackdown on Activists) But the mass protests against the moderately Islamist government of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan that have taken place over the past two days are different. For one, they are the biggest in years. On Friday evening, thousands of people streamed down Istiklal en route to Taksim Square, where the spark that ignited the ongoing unrest was first lit, before being beaten back by police units. The following day, as police abandoned the square, even more protesters arrived, their numbers in the tens if not hundreds of thousands. Protests and clashes have since broken out in a number of other cities across Turkey, including the capital, Ankara. As of Saturday night, 939 people had been arrested and 79 wounded in 90 demonstrations around the country, according to the Ministry of the Interior. Volunteer doctors around Taksim estimated that the number of injured exceeded 1,000. It all began on May 27 in a small park right behind Taksim, where a number of activists converged to protest plans to turn the area — one of the few green spaces in the city center — into a replica of an Ottoman barracks and shopping arcade. Over the next few days, as construction workers began uprooting trees, police repeatedly raided the sit-in, dispersing the protesters with tear gas, batons and water cannons. Images of wounded young men and women immediately began making the rounds on TV and social media, sparking wave after wave of popular outrage, as![]()
