ALAN Clements, head of content with STV, was tear-gassed last night as riot police clashed with protesters in Istanbul's Taksim Square.
Clements, husband of BBC Newsnight anchor Kirsty Wark, was on holiday in the Turkish capital with three friends to celebrate the 30th anniversary of their graduation from Glasgow University when trouble flared at the central square, which has been the focus of anti-government demonstrations since the end of May.
Clements said: "We were having a meal a couple of hundred metres from Taksim Square. It kicked off when columns of riot police started sweeping people out. The police were firing tear gas canisters and I saw one guy throw one back at the police. Water cannon were used. People were crying and were very upset.
"They were mostly young protesters – they weren't anarchists. It didn't seem to be as if they provoked it. Last night, the square was very quiet. The protesters did seem prepared. Some were wearing gas masks, or surgical masks and hard hats. People were handing out lemons to squeeze under their eyes to help against the tear gas.
"This isn't the kind of thing you expect to see when you've been to the Hagia Sophia (a former mosque and now a major tourist attraction in the city) and gone for beer and kebabs."
As he spoke to the Sunday Herald by phone, Clements said tear gas was still in the air, the street was flooded from water cannon and smoking debris could be seen. "Protesters are trying to get back to the square," Clements added.
The Turkish riot police eventually cleared thousands of protesters from the square. Demonstrators had earlier thrown red carnations – a symbol of the four people who have died in the unrest so far – at police lines. Some 100,000 gathered yesterday in Taksim Square.
The move against the protesters came as Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan told thousands of supporters in the Black Sea city of Samsun that weeks of protests against his government had played into the hands of Turkey's enemies. In Samsun, a crowd of some 15,000 of Erdogan's AK Party faithful cheered and waved Turkish flags as he called on the public to give their answer to protests at the ballot box when Turkey holds municipal elections next March.
The blunt-talking 59-year-old said opponents both within Turkey and abroad had orchestrated the demonstrations, saying an "interest rate lobby" of financial speculators had benefited from the unrest.
"Who won from these three weeks of protests? The interest rate lobby, Turkey's enemies," Erdogan said.
In a speech appealing to his conservative grassroots support, Erdogan made fresh accusations that those involved in the protests in Turkey's main western cities were disrespectful towards Islam, the religion of the vast majority of Turkey.
"Let them go into mosques in their shoes, let them drink alcohol in our mosques ... One prayer from our people is enough to frustrate their plans," Erdogan said, before tossing red carnations to the crowd.
The protests have underlined divisions in Turkish society between religious conservatives and more liberal Turks.
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