Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey’s prime minister, has suggested that the same outside forces are behind protests in both his own country and Brazil, as Turkish authorities continue their crackdown on overwhelmingly peaceful protesters.
Mr Erdogan was speaking hours before police used water cannon and tear gas to disperse thousands of flower-bearing protesters who gathered in Istanbul’s central Taksim square to commemorate four people who have died since the Turkish unrest erupted on May 31.
“The same game is being played in Brazil,” Mr Erdogan told a large rally of his supporters in the town of Samsun on Saturday. “There are the same symbols, the same posters. Twitter, Facebook is the same, so are international media. They are controlled from the same centre. They are doing their best to achieve in Brazil what they could not achieve in Turkey. It is the same game, the same trap, the same goal.”
Erdogan says same forces behind Brazil and Turkey protests
by Daniel Dombey
http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/db155bd4-dbe2-11e2-8853-00144feab7de.html
While Mr Erdogan says the Turkish protests are linked to terrorism, an international plot against his country and “an interest rate lobby” disturbed by its recent high rates of growth, the protesters say they are motivated by increasing levels of authoritarianism under his government.
Some protesters waved Brazilian flags on Saturday night, in what they say is recognition of the mutual inspiration that the protests in Brazil and Turkey have caused.
The gathering in Taksim square was the largest since the prime minister ordered police to clear the adjoining Gezi Park a week before – but many protesters were nevertheless surprised when police ordered them to leave Taksim and then water-cannoned them.
The protesters had done little more than chant and throw carnations at the riot police. In hours of subsequent clashes, the police used tear gas on protesters in nearby streets, although the confrontation did not reach the levels of the week before, when police used tear gas and water cannon against a hotel and a hospital respectively.
In his speech in Samsun, Mr Erdogan said the young protesters were being manipulated by the interest rate lobby, which he has never fully defined but has previously linked with Turkish private banks, international capital groups and, according to at least one report, Israel.
“Who won from these three-week long demonstrations?” Mr Erdogan asked. “The interest lobby won. The enemies of Turkey won. The Turkish economy lost a bit. It lost tourists.”
Hotel occupancy has gone down in central Istanbul, but last week the most pronounced losses were registered by the Istanbul stock exchange and the lira as traded against the dollar, which both marked steep declines after the US Federal Reserve suggested it could begin tapering monetary stimulus. Turkish bond yields have also shot up over the past month.
Mr Erdogan also attacked Kemal Kilicdaroglu, the leader of Turkey’s opposition Republican People’s party, or CHP, who recently pleaded with Germany’s chancellor Angela Merkel not to put Ankara’s membership talks with the EU on hold because of the crackdown on the protests.
“The head of the CHP apparently wrote a letter to German chancellor Merkel,” Mr Erdogan said. “He informs against his own country . . . Rather than talking to his own people he goes on crying to other countries’ leaders. Just like he co-operated with Turkey’s enemy [Syrian President Bashar al-] Assad, now he declares that he is ready to co-operate with those who do not want Turkey in Europe.”
Relations between Ankara and Berlin have become increasingly strained in the wake of Germany’s move last week to block EU negotiations that had been scheduled to begin later this month, after three years in which Turkey’s membership bid has in effect been stalled.
On Friday, Germany summoned Turkey’s ambassador to Berlin to explain comments in which Egemen Bagis, Turkey’s EU minister, had suggested that the German government was playing politics with Ankara’s EU bid and that Ms Merkel could be defeated in elections, as was former President Nicolas Sarkozy of France, another foe of Turkish EU membership.
The Turkish government later reciprocated by calling in the German ambassador to Ankara.
Berlin’s block on the opening of EU regional policy negotiations is not yet final. Guido Westerwelle, Germany’s foreign minister, who unlike Ms Merkel is a supporter of Turkish membership, has been looking for ways out of the impasse. The Irish presidency of the EU has also told Germany there is still time this week to give the green light to the talks if it changes its position.
Germany says its doubts about beginning talks this month are caused by technical reasons, but has also criticised the Turkish crackdown, which Ms Merkel has described as shocking.