The “Taksim Platform”, the group of activists who began protesting against the destruction of a local park, and have now emerged as representatives for the mass protests, met with Deputy Prime Minister Bulent Arinc to discuss ways to resolve the deadlock between the protesters and the government.
Denouncing Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s “vexing” style they urged to halt Taksim Square redevelopment plans, ban the use of tear gas by police, and called for the sacking of police chiefs in Istanbul, Ankara, and other cities where “excessive” tear gas was used.
The meeting came as up to 29 people were reportedly arrested during house raids in Turkey’s third most populous city Izmir, accused of “inciting riots and conducting propaganda” on the social media network Twitter.
The arrests provoked a further barrage of outrage and “propaganda” for the demonstrations by other Twitter users. The online group RedHack, a sort of Turkish version of WikiLeaks, Tweeted that should police try to arrest someone for using social media, the detainee should claim their account was hacked, and blame it on RedHack.
Fear of the crackdown is such that a Turkish television channel suspended the popular game show “Word Game” after the host asked candidates to guess the words “gas mask”, “police” and “violence” during a live quiz, a local newspaper reported.
Ahmet Davutoglu, Turkey’s foreign minister, on Wednesday accused the US of treating Turkey “as a second-class democracy,” in response to John Kerry, the US Secretary of State,’ criticism of the crackdowns on protesters.
For more than a week hundreds of thousands of protesters, most of them university students and liberals from Turkey’s middle classes, have taken to the streets in protest at what they perceive to be Mr Erdogan’s increasingly authoritarian style of ruling.
Police responded by firing tear gas and water cannons.
Though largely leaderless, protesters have used social media to coordinate the mostly peaceful protests, and to warn each other of police interference.
“Plain clothes police men were springing on protesters and arresting them near a hotel on Taksim square. I tweeted the location to warn everyone from coming there,” one young female protester told The Daily Telegraph.
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