Erdogan’s Turkish Police “Armed to the Teeth” to Crush Freedom Protests, detains foreign correspondents

_{A protester raises her fist and shouts during a demonstration on June 9, on Gundogdu Square in Izmir. Turkey's defiant Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan told supporters on June 9 that his patience "has a limit" as he went on the offensive against mass protests to his Islamic-rooted government's decade-long rule. As tens of thousands of protesters massed in Istanbul, the capital Ankara and the western city of Izmir, in unrest now in its 10th day, Erdogan staged his own rallies across three cities to fire up loyalists of his ruling supremaist Justice and Development Party.}

How do you call Turkey a democracy when you violently crack down on freedom demos? And why are the eurodhimmis rushing Turkey's entry into the EU when Prime Minsiter Erdogan embodies the very worst elements of Islamic supremacism?

And how disturbing is it that this Islamic brute is Obama's "favorite and most trusted ally"?

CBC foreign correspondents detained in Turkey

A protester is hit by spray from a water cannon during clashes in Taksim Square on June 11.

Riot police fire tear gas to disperse the crowd during a demonstration near Taksim Square on June 11 in Istanbul.

"Turkey: Erdoğan clears Taksim Square – live reaction" The Guardian

VIDEO: Amateur video purports to show protesters in Taksim Square, Istanbul, on Tuesday trying to escape teargas used by police to clear the demonstration. People are seen collapsing, coughing and with tears running down their faces in the chaos. Turkey's prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, vowed to clear Taksim Square after almost two weeks of protest:

Good morning and welcome to the Guardian’s live coverage of the continuing protests in Turkey.

• Taksim Square was largely deserted this morning after Turkish riot police using tear gas and water cannon battled protesters
for control of the square in Istanbul overnight, hours after the prime
minister, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, had demanded an immediate end to 10 days
of demonstrations. The confrontation began just after dawn
when hundreds of riot police on foot and in armoured crowd control
vehicles approached the square, the start of some of the worst clashes
of the current unrest. This morning it is raining in Istanbul and the
square is strewn with the wreckage of bulldozed barricades. Taxis were
able to cross it for the first time since the protests began.

• Several hundred protesters remain in an encampment of tents
in Gezi Park, the green space next to Taksim Square that demonstrators
are trying to save from being demolished to make way for a shopping
centre; protests have since snowballed into a nationwide display of
anger at Erdoğan’s increasingly authoritarian and Islamist style.
It is not clear whether the protesters will attempt to return to Taksim
Square today, as they have previously. Three people have died in 10
days of unrest, and according to the Turkish Medical Association almost
5,000 people have been wounded.

• Erdoğan is due to meet a group of public figures about the
protests this afternoon, but the demonstrators do not consider
themselves represented by this group. The prime minister has
taken a consistently hardline stance towards the demonstrators, calling
them “riff-raff”, warning he would not “kneel” before them and telling
them yesterday: “This Tayyip Erdoğan won’t change.” He has blamed the
protests on a foreign conspiracy and financial profiteers.

• Faced with a choice between engaging with this new, vibrant
civil society movement or crushing it, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has picked
the latter course, writes Luke Harding,
drawing parallels between the Turkish prime minister’s reaction to his
citizens’ revolt and another autocratic leader: Vladimir Putin.

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Thousands of Turkish lawyers in black robes
“stormed out” of their courthouses today, according to the Associated
Press, in protest against their colleagues’ treatment by the police
during the protests.

Yesterday more than 50 lawyers were dragged on to buses by police
after staging a sit-in to support the demonstrators. They were later
released.

"Lawyers can't be dragged on the ground!" the demonstrating lawyers
shouted as they marched out of an Istanbul courthouse. Riot police stood
off to the side, shields at the ready.

Turkey's Human Rights Foundation said the Istanbul Public
Prosecutor's office had launched an investigation into allegations of
excessive use of police force during the protests.

The foundation said 620 people, including a one-year-old baby, were
injured during the police crackdown early this morning. Police detained
some 70 people during the incidents.

Turkish lawyers march in support of anti-government protests in Ankara today. Photograph: AFP/Getty Images