Turkey: Protester killed in Syria sit-in

Turkish anti-government protester Ahmet Atakan dies in the early hours TuesdayThe 22-year-old was taking part in a sit-in against military intervention in SyriaHatay governor's office says he fell from a building after police and protesters clashed Anti-government protesters also clashed with police in Ankara and Istanbul, media say

Hatay, Turkey (CNN) -- Clashes erupted across Turkey on Tuesday after a predawn skirmish between police and protesters left one demonstrator dead in the border province of Hatay.

Crowds of demonstrators gathered in the cities of Istanbul, Ankara and Hatay to denounce the death of Ahmet Atakan, a 22-year-old who recently graduated from accounting school.

Police in Istanbul dispersed demonstrators using water cannons, tear gas and rubber pellets. Thousands of demonstrators tried to reach Taksim Square, a main commercial area that has been the site of clashes since May. Riot police prevented small groups from congregating in the square.

Demonstrators erected barricades, threw stones and shot firecrackers at the police. Crowds of protestors chanted "Down with the government" and "Solidarity with Armutlu" referring to the neighborhood in Hatay where Atakan was fatally injured.

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The Spanish referee suspended the game after the tear gas wafted into the stadium, which is named after Turkey's prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Several days ago, Istanbul lost a hotly contested bid to host the 2020 Olympics to rival Tokyo.

Many analysts said the widely criticized use of police force to crush anti-government protests last June may have played in a role in Istanbul's Olympic defeat.

Differing accounts of how protester died

There is still controversy over how Atakan, the protester in Hatay, died.

In a press release, the Hatay governor's office said Atakan was killed in a fall during a clash between police and demonstrators.

Shortly before 1 a.m. on Tuesday, a patrol unit reported that one person "had fallen to the street from a building" and an ambulance was sent, the governor's office said.

"However, people at the scene wanted to take the injured individual to the hospital with their own resources, and our citizen Ahmet Atakan was taken to the Antakya Government Hospital, but he lost his life in spite of all efforts at the hospital."

Police released a video taken from atop an armored vehicle that showed the blurry image of a man apparently falling off a street curb into the street.

But eyewitnesses insisted Atakan was struck in the head at short range by a tear gas canister fired from the turret of an armored vehicle.

Eylem Mansuroglu said that immediately after being hit by the canister, Atakan was grazed by a passing police vehicle. Atakan's blood still stained the pavement where residents erected a makeshift memorial for the dead man.

Hasan Akgol, a parliament member from Turkey's opposition CHP party, told CNN he had seen Atakan's body on a stretcher.

"I couldn't believe it, seeing a young kid covered in blood," Akgol said. "He had an injury behind his ear, blood all over his body, scratches on his body."

Atakan is the second anti-government protester to die in Hatay this summer.

Neighborhood rises up in protest

Atakan's parents told CNN their son had gone out to the streets after attending a wedding Monday night, to attend a protest sit-in.

They said it was a weekly protest in honor of Abdullah Comert, another young man from the same neighborhood who was killed in a clash with police last June, barely 3 blocks from where Atakan was fatally injured. The protest was also against the Turkish government and its strong support for Syrian rebels and a proposed U.S.-led military operation in Syria.

Bergen: Syria plunging Mideast into sectarian war?

"My son protested against war so that there would be peace. In Turkey they kill those who want peace," screamed Atakan's weeping mother, Emsal, before her son's burial on Tuesday.

"Erdogan's dogs killed my son," she wailed.

In the afternoon on Tuesday, a procession of more than a thousand people escorted Atakan's coffin to a cemetery, chanting, "We are all Ahmet. You can kill one but not all," and "Murderer police will answer for their actions."

After the burial, crowds marched to the street where Atakan was injured.

Police used water cannons and fired tear gas to disperse the demonstrators.

Protestors set up burning barricades and threw stones at armored police vehicles.

Much of the neighborhood of Armutlu appeared to be rising up in protest.

Women screamed out of their balconies, demanding police stay out of the area. From an apartment building, one resident hurled a potted plant off a balcony at an armored vehicle passing on the street below. A portly woman threw a plate down on to the street. One man carried a toilet out into the road and smashed it onto the ground to build a barricade out of the debris.

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Turkey country profile

5 June 2013 Last updated at 10:14 GMT Once the centre of the Ottoman Empire, the modern secular republic was established in the 1920s by nationalist leader Kemal Ataturk.

Straddling the continents of Europe and Asia, Turkey's strategically important location has given it major influence in the region - and control over the entrance to the Black Sea.

Turkey's progress towards democracy and a market economy was halting in the decades following the death of President Ataturk in 1938. The army saw itself as the guarantor of the constitution, and ousted governments on a number of occasions when it thought they were challenging secular values.

Efforts to reduce state control over the economy also faced many obstacles. After years of mounting difficulties which brought the country close to economic collapse, a tough recovery programme was agreed with the IMF in 2002.

The austerity measures imposed then meant that by the time the global financial crisis came round in 2008, Turkey was in a better position to weather the storm than many other countries.

Turkey is a member of Nato and aspires to being part of the European Union Continue reading the main story Politics: Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan of the Islamist AKP began his third term in 2011. He has dealt ruthlessly with alleged challenges from the powerful, secularist militaryEconomy: The economy has enjoyed strong growth, fuelled by trade and foreign investment. Tourism, agriculture and manufacturing are key sectorsInternational: EU accession negotiations have been tortuous, bedevilled by disputes with Greece over Cyprus. Former close ties with Israel have deteriorated, while Turkey's constitutional model is frequently cited as a model by reformers throughout the Arab region

Country profiles compiled by BBC Monitoring

The level of public debt was already relatively low, and although the effects of the recession were still felt, by 2010 the Turkish economy had started to bounce back - to the extent that by the beginning of 2011, concerns were being raised over whether the boom was sustainable.

Rise of AKP

Concerns over the potential for conflict between a secular establishment backed by the military and a traditional society deeply rooted in Islam resurfaced with the landslide election victory of the Islamist-based Justice and Development Party (AKP) in 2002.

The secularist opposition has on several occasions since then challenged the constitutional right of the AKP to be the party of government. In March 2008 the Constitutional Court narrowly rejected a petition by the chief prosecutor to ban the AKP and 71 of its officials, including President Abdullah Gul and Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, for allegedly seeking to establish an Islamic state.

The government has accused military officers of plotting to overthrow it through an alleged secret organisation called Ergenekon (Sledgehammer), which led to the jailing of three generals for 20 years and lesser sentences against more than 300 other officers in 2012, as well as dividing public opinion. The officers involved accuse the government of a show trial to neutralise the anti-Islamist influence of the armed forces in politics.

The chiefs of staff resigned in the summer of 2011 in protests at the arrests of officers, and the government rather than the military appointed their successors for the first time.

The government has not had everything its own way. Concerns at creeping Islamisation spilled over into mass protests in various cities in the summer of 2013, to which the police responded with violence and the government with a confusion of bluster and apology. For the first time in his decade in power, Prime Minister Erdogan began to look politically vulnerable.

Foreign relations

Turkey became an EU candidate country in 1999 and, in line with EU requirements, went on to introduce substantial human rights and economic reforms. The death penalty was abolished, tougher measures were brought in against torture and the penal code was overhauled.

Reforms were introduced in the areas of women's rights and Kurdish culture, language, education and broadcasting. Women's rights activists have said the reforms do not go far enough and have accused the government of lacking full commitment to equality and of acting only under EU pressure.

After intense bargaining, EU membership talks were launched in October 2005. Accession negotiations are expected to take about 10 years. So far, the going has not been easy.

Turkey has long been at odds with its close neighbour, Greece, over the divided island of Cyprus and territorial disputes in the Aegean.

The breakthrough in its EU membership talks came just weeks after Turkey agreed to recognise Cyprus as an EU member - though it qualified this conciliatory step by declaring that it was not tantamount to full diplomatic recognition.

Several European countries continue to have serious misgivings over Turkey's EU membership, and Germany and France have called for it to have a "privileged partnership" with the EU instead of full membership.

Turkey long saw itself as the eastern bulwark of the Nato alliance, and underlined this by having close ties with Israel. But under Mr Erdogan Turkey has taken an openly confrontational approach to Israel, counting on its new prestige in Arab countries to boost its regional standing as a power broker.

The outbreak of civil war in neighbouring Syria has seen Turkey's stance move from detente with the Assad government to open support for the rebels, albeit stopping short of military assistance. This has left Turkey exposed within the Nato alliance, which continues to keep the Syrian conflict at arms length, but has further enhanced Turkey's prestige in Arab public opinion.

The Kurdish issue The issue of Turkey's minority Kurds has troubled the country for decades

Turkey is home to a sizeable Kurdish minority, which by some estimates constitutes up to a fifth of the population. The Kurds have long complained that the Turkish government was trying to destroy their identity and that they suffer from economic disadvantage and human rights violations.

The Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), the best known and most radical of the Kurdish movements, launched a guerrilla campaign in 1984 for a homeland in the Kurdish heartland in the southeast. Thousands died and hundreds of thousands became refugees in the ensuing conflict with the PKK, which Turkey, the US and the European Union deem a terrorist organisation.

Kurdish guerrilla attacks briefly subsided after the 1999 capture of PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan, but soon began to increase again.

Partly in a bid to improve its chances of EU membership, the government began to ease restrictions on the use of the Kurdish language from 2003 onwards. As part of a new "Kurdish initiative" launched in 2009, it pledged to extend linguistic and cultural rights and to reduce the military presence in the mainly Kurdish southeast of the country.

Although fighting continued, the PKK signalled its readiness to cease fire in 2010. After months of talks, Abdullah Ocalan ordered his fighters to stop attacking Turkey and withdraw from the country from May 2013, effectively ending the insurgency.

East meets west in Turkey's second city Istanbul, which straddles Europe and Asia

View the original article here

Turkey country profile

5 June 2013 Last updated at 10:14 GMT Once the centre of the Ottoman Empire, the modern secular republic was established in the 1920s by nationalist leader Kemal Ataturk.

Straddling the continents of Europe and Asia, Turkey's strategically important location has given it major influence in the region - and control over the entrance to the Black Sea.

Turkey's progress towards democracy and a market economy was halting in the decades following the death of President Ataturk in 1938. The army saw itself as the guarantor of the constitution, and ousted governments on a number of occasions when it thought they were challenging secular values.

Efforts to reduce state control over the economy also faced many obstacles. After years of mounting difficulties which brought the country close to economic collapse, a tough recovery programme was agreed with the IMF in 2002.

The austerity measures imposed then meant that by the time the global financial crisis came round in 2008, Turkey was in a better position to weather the storm than many other countries.

Turkey is a member of Nato and aspires to being part of the European Union Continue reading the main story Politics: Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan of the Islamist AKP began his third term in 2011. He has dealt ruthlessly with alleged challenges from the powerful, secularist militaryEconomy: The economy has enjoyed strong growth, fuelled by trade and foreign investment. Tourism, agriculture and manufacturing are key sectorsInternational: EU accession negotiations have been tortuous, bedevilled by disputes with Greece over Cyprus. Former close ties with Israel have deteriorated, while Turkey's constitutional model is frequently cited as a model by reformers throughout the Arab region

Country profiles compiled by BBC Monitoring

The level of public debt was already relatively low, and although the effects of the recession were still felt, by 2010 the Turkish economy had started to bounce back - to the extent that by the beginning of 2011, concerns were being raised over whether the boom was sustainable.

Rise of AKP

Concerns over the potential for conflict between a secular establishment backed by the military and a traditional society deeply rooted in Islam resurfaced with the landslide election victory of the Islamist-based Justice and Development Party (AKP) in 2002.

The secularist opposition has on several occasions since then challenged the constitutional right of the AKP to be the party of government. In March 2008 the Constitutional Court narrowly rejected a petition by the chief prosecutor to ban the AKP and 71 of its officials, including President Abdullah Gul and Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, for allegedly seeking to establish an Islamic state.

The government has accused military officers of plotting to overthrow it through an alleged secret organisation called Ergenekon (Sledgehammer), which led to the jailing of three generals for 20 years and lesser sentences against more than 300 other officers in 2012, as well as dividing public opinion. The officers involved accuse the government of a show trial to neutralise the anti-Islamist influence of the armed forces in politics.

The chiefs of staff resigned in the summer of 2011 in protests at the arrests of officers, and the government rather than the military appointed their successors for the first time.

The government has not had everything its own way. Concerns at creeping Islamisation spilled over into mass protests in various cities in the summer of 2013, to which the police responded with violence and the government with a confusion of bluster and apology. For the first time in his decade in power, Prime Minister Erdogan began to look politically vulnerable.

Foreign relations

Turkey became an EU candidate country in 1999 and, in line with EU requirements, went on to introduce substantial human rights and economic reforms. The death penalty was abolished, tougher measures were brought in against torture and the penal code was overhauled.

Reforms were introduced in the areas of women's rights and Kurdish culture, language, education and broadcasting. Women's rights activists have said the reforms do not go far enough and have accused the government of lacking full commitment to equality and of acting only under EU pressure.

After intense bargaining, EU membership talks were launched in October 2005. Accession negotiations are expected to take about 10 years. So far, the going has not been easy.

Turkey has long been at odds with its close neighbour, Greece, over the divided island of Cyprus and territorial disputes in the Aegean.

The breakthrough in its EU membership talks came just weeks after Turkey agreed to recognise Cyprus as an EU member - though it qualified this conciliatory step by declaring that it was not tantamount to full diplomatic recognition.

Several European countries continue to have serious misgivings over Turkey's EU membership, and Germany and France have called for it to have a "privileged partnership" with the EU instead of full membership.

Turkey long saw itself as the eastern bulwark of the Nato alliance, and underlined this by having close ties with Israel. But under Mr Erdogan Turkey has taken an openly confrontational approach to Israel, counting on its new prestige in Arab countries to boost its regional standing as a power broker.

The outbreak of civil war in neighbouring Syria has seen Turkey's stance move from detente with the Assad government to open support for the rebels, albeit stopping short of military assistance. This has left Turkey exposed within the Nato alliance, which continues to keep the Syrian conflict at arms length, but has further enhanced Turkey's prestige in Arab public opinion.

The Kurdish issue The issue of Turkey's minority Kurds has troubled the country for decades

Turkey is home to a sizeable Kurdish minority, which by some estimates constitutes up to a fifth of the population. The Kurds have long complained that the Turkish government was trying to destroy their identity and that they suffer from economic disadvantage and human rights violations.

The Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), the best known and most radical of the Kurdish movements, launched a guerrilla campaign in 1984 for a homeland in the Kurdish heartland in the southeast. Thousands died and hundreds of thousands became refugees in the ensuing conflict with the PKK, which Turkey, the US and the European Union deem a terrorist organisation.

Kurdish guerrilla attacks briefly subsided after the 1999 capture of PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan, but soon began to increase again.

Partly in a bid to improve its chances of EU membership, the government began to ease restrictions on the use of the Kurdish language from 2003 onwards. As part of a new "Kurdish initiative" launched in 2009, it pledged to extend linguistic and cultural rights and to reduce the military presence in the mainly Kurdish southeast of the country.

Although fighting continued, the PKK signalled its readiness to cease fire in 2010. After months of talks, Abdullah Ocalan ordered his fighters to stop attacking Turkey and withdraw from the country from May 2013, effectively ending the insurgency.

East meets west in Turkey's second city Istanbul, which straddles Europe and Asia

View the original article here