Police arrest more than 400 in Istanbul May Day showdown

Istanbul: Police arrested more than 400 people in Istanbul on Thursday, officials said, amidst a massive show of force to prevent May Day demonstrations in Turkey’s biggest city.

More than 50,000 police were deployed and key metro, bus and ferry services were shut down as part of the operation.

May Day came with the government embroiled in a battle with the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), following the detention of its presidential candidate Ekrem Imamoglu, mayor of Istanbul.

Imamoglu is the biggest political rival of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

More than 400 people were arrested, a day after 100 people were detained for allegedly planning to protest in the central Taksim Square, where demonstrations have been banned since 2013. “The number of arrests that have been reported to us exceeds 400,” the Istanbul branch of the CHD lawyers group wrote on X.

Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya said on X that 407 protesters were arrested in Istanbul, while a statement by Istanbul authorities said 52,656 police officers had been deployed in the city.

AFP journalists witnessed several dozen people being detained in neighbourhoods on the European side of Istanbul.

Several thousand people assembled in sanctioned protests called by unions on the Asian side of the city.

“They blocked all the streets, as if it’s a state of emergency,” a student named Murat, who did not want to give his last name, told AFP. “That shows the government is scared.”

On Wednesday, rights group Amnesty International urged Turkey to lift the ban on demonstrations in Taksim.

“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, an Amnesty’s specialist on Europe.

As happens every year, the square has been sealed off with metal barriers for several days, with a heavy police presence.