STOCK MARKET WATCH -- Monday, 3 June 2013

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18. World from Berlin: 'Turkey's Youth Have Had Enough'

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/german-press-react-to-anti-government-protests-in-turkey-a-903459.html


Anti-government protesters behind barricades and positioned on an excavator clash with riot police as they approach the office of Prime Minister Erdogan in Istanbul in the early morning of June 3.

Protesters clashed with police in Istanbul and several other Turkish cities Sunday night and again on Monday in some of the worse violence since anti-government protests began three days ago. What started as a demonstration against plans to bulldoze a park near Istanbul's central Taksim Square to make way for a shopping mall has developed into broader resistance to the government of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Erdogan responded to the initial demonstration with a brutal crackdown, sending police forces to fire tear gas at the demonstrators.

The wave of unrest that followed signifies the biggest challenge to Erdogan's leadership in the 10 years since he's been in office. The protesters complain that the prime minister and his Justice and Development Party (AKP) are forcing conservative Islamic mores on the population and growing increasingly authoritarian -- even as Erdogan has been lauded in the West for strengthening Turkey economically and bolstering its influence on the world stage.
On Sunday night, thousands protested in the Besiktas neighborhood, where the prime minister's office is located, and were met once more with a heavy response from police, who fired tear gas and water cannons at the protesters, according to Arabic news channel al-Jazeera.

More than 1,000 people have been injured in the clashes, with at least two deaths, according to human rights organization Amnesty International. The Turkish government reports nearly 1,000 arrests, and Interior Minister Muammer Güler told Turkish journalists that there have been some 90 protests in 48 out of Turkey's 81 provinces.