Turkey must lift ban on May 1 demonstrations in İstanbul’s Taksim Square: Amnesty

Turkey must lift its ban on May Day demonstrations in İstanbul’s Taksim Square, Amnesty International said Wednesday after police detained some 100 people who were allegedly planning to protest there.

“The restrictions on May Day celebrations in Taksim Square are based on entirely spurious security and public order grounds and … must be urgently lifted,” said Dinushika Dissanayake, Amnesty’s deputy regional director for Europe, in a statement.

Demonstrations have been banned there since the 2013 Gezi Park protests, which spread across Turkey and were brutally suppressed by the police, claiming eight lives and leaving thousands injured.

Since then the government has tightly controlled any form of protest at the sprawling plaza, banning any kind of gathering, be it for May Day, International Women’s Day or Pride marches.

Since Monday police have staged a string of pre-emptive raids across the city, rounding up more than 100 people who called for May Day rallies at Taksim Square, media reports said.

The move came after İstanbul’s chief public prosecutor issued warrants for the detention of 108 people.

As happens every year ahead of May 1, the square has been sealed off with a sea of metal barriers and many thousands of police likely to be deployed to prevent any violations.

Earlier on Wednesday, police rounded up another 20 people, Turgut Delioğlu, chairman of the DISK labor union, told Agence France-Presse.

He said the union would gather on Thursday in Kadıköy on the Asian side of the city where police were not expected to intervene.

Taksim Square was fenced off last month following the detention and subsequent arrest of İstanbul’s opposition mayor, Ekrem İmamoğlu, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s biggest political rival.

The move against him sparked the biggest wave of anti-government protests in Turkey since Gezi.

Earlier this month, İstanbul Governor Davut Gül said anyone seeking to defy the ban on demonstrations at Taksim would be prosecuted.

“For many years, no demonstrations have been allowed in Taksim Square and İstiklal Avenue for security reasons … [and] persistently calling for an assembly in this area is a provocation,” he wrote on X on April 19, warning that those who did so would face criminal charges.

Amnesty said the ban defied a 2023 ruling by Turkey’s Constitutional Court that found the restriction on marking May Day at the square violated unions’ rights to freedom of assembly.

© Agence France-Presse