Istanbul police fire tear gas at banned Women’s Day demonstration

Police in the Turkish city of Istanbul have fired tear gas to disperse thousands of women who were marching on International Women’s Day to denounce violence and demand greater rights in defiance of a government ban on holding protest rallies.

Istanbul anti-riot police officers turned a peaceful march on the condemnation of violence against women on Friday evening into a violent one when they began hurling tear gas canisters and pepper spray among several thousands of demonstrators who had defied a government order banning such rally on Istiklal Caddesi, the city's central avenue.

Hundreds of riot police in full gear blocked the demonstrators’ path in an attempt to bar them from marching along the district’s main pedestrian avenue. As a result, scuffles broke after police forces pushed the women and menaced them with dogs to flee into side streets off the avenue.

No report of possible injuries and detentions has been released yet.

Hours prior to the banned rally, the area was teeming with police personnel who had erected cordons around the central Taksim Square, while many local shops were closed.

“Here is the bitter truth: There is a system, there is a state that is scared of us. I condemn this. We are not silent, we are not scared,” one of the women told an AFP correspondent from behind a police barrier.

Demonstrators were carrying banners that read “Feminist revolt against male violence, and poverty”, and “I was born free and I will live free.” Women were also chanting slogans such as “We are not silent, we are not scared, and we are not obeying.”

Women’s activists have long accused the government of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of not doing enough to prevent violence against women.

According to a report by the Umut (Hope) Foundation, a prominent NGO dedicated to reducing personal gun ownership, 447 women were killed and 232 others were injured in crimes linked to their gender at the hands of violent men in Turkey last year.

A smaller rally with a few hundred women and small police presence was also held in capital Ankara. Some demonstrators were chanting “Men are killing and the state is protecting killers.”

Large-scale protest rallies are rarely held in the Anatolian country since mass anti-government demonstrations in 2013, which were considered as a major challenge to Erdogan.

Furthermore, Turkish police regularly prevent holding protests in central Istanbul and elsewhere. Ankara tightened restrictions after a persisting emergency rule was declared following a failed coup in mid-June 2016 against Erdogan. The state of emergency was lifted last July.

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