Turkey’s deputy prime minister has apologised for “excessive violence” against protesters trying to save a park in Istanbul, as he attempted to draw a line between them and anti-government dissent that has swept the country.
Bulent Arinc on Tuesday admitted the state had acted harshly when it sent in police to clear environmentalists participating in a sit-in protest to save Istanbul’s Gezi Park last week.
“At the beginning of the protests, the excessive violence used against people concerned about the environment was wrong. It was unfair and I apologise to those citizens,” he said.
However, he refused to reconcile with those who joined the later anti-government demonstrations. “The ones who caused the destruction to the public property and the ones who are trying to restrict people’s freedoms, we do not need to apologise.”
Thousands of people have been injured in four days of demonstrations, as police attempted to contain protesters with tear gas, water cannons and baton charges.
Union solidarity: His comments came as thousands of public sector workers began a two-day strike in solidarity with the anti-government protesters.
The strike was called by The Public Workers Unions Confederation in response to “state terror implemented against mass protests across the country”. It said the government of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan had “shown once again … enmity to democracy”.
The confederation, which has an estimated 240,000 members in 11 unions, said the strike would last for two days.
However, unions were not particularly strong in Turkey and it was difficult to say what effect a strike would have.
At least two people, both men, have died in the demonstrations.
The first was killed in an accident with a taxi in Istanbul. The second man died during a protest in Antakya, close to the Syrian border. The NTV television channel said Abdullah Comert, 22, was shot in the head, but authorities disputed the claim, saying he suffered a blow to the head rather than a bullet wound.
Social media was awash with reports and videos of police abuse. Turkey’s Human Rights Foundation claimed more than 1,000 protesters were subjected “to ill-treatment and torture” by police.
Despite facing the biggest challenge to his rule since he came to office in 2002, Erdogan left Turkey earlier on Monday on an official visit to Morocco, where he insisted the situation in his country was “calming down”.
He earlier rejected talk of a “Turkish Spring” uprising by Turks who accuse him of trying to impose religious reforms on the secular state, and dismissed the protesters as “vandals”, stressing that he was democratically elected.
Erdogan has blamed the protests on “extremists”, “dissidents” and the main opposition Republican People’s Party.
