SOLIDARITY

Turkey’s Unions Go on Strike

While sporadic clashes continue in Istanbul.

Turkey’s two major unions—which consist of roughly 800,000 workers—went on a one-day strike on Monday to show solidarity with the protesters who were evicted from Gezi Park on Saturday night. Turkish Interior Minister Muammer Guler denounced the strike as “illegal.” Sporadic clashes between police and protesters continued in Istanbul, where police violently removed protesters on Saturday night ahead of a rally in support of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. At Sunday’s rally, Erdogan told hundreds of thousands that the two weeks of countrywide protests had been manipulated by “terrorists” and denied that he was behaving like a dictator. Meanwhile, the president of the Turkish medical association told the BBC that five doctors and three nurses had disappeared since treating the protesters.