Recep Tayyip Erdogan rejects talk of 'Turkish Spring' after protest death
Erdogan blames escalating violence on 'extremists' as clashes continue into fourth day and the first death of the unrest is reported
Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan yesterday rejected talk of a "Turkish Spring", shrugging off mass protests against his Islamic-rooted government as medics reported the first death in four days of violence.
The clashes claimed their first victim on Sunday when a car ploughed into demonstrators occupying a highway in Istanbul, killing left-wing activist Mehmet Ayvalitas, the Union of Turkish Doctors said.
We will not give away anything to those who live arm in arm with terrorism
In Ankara, police fired tear gas and water cannons to disperse hundreds of stone-throwing protesters, after a string of similar clashes in scores of cities across Turkey since Friday.
Erdogan, who went ahead with an official visit to Morocco despite facing the biggest challenge against his decade-long rule, has vowed to "stand firm" against the protests. He dismissed the demonstrators as "vandals", rejecting talk of an uprising and stressing that he was democratically elected.
"Was there a multiparty system in the Arab Spring countries?" Erdogan said in televised comments yesterday.
His own tenure in office, with the economic and political reforms it has brought, was itself the "Turkish Spring", he said. "Those in foreign media who talk about a Turkish Spring, we are already going through Turkish Spring, we have been living in it, and those who want to turn it into winter will not succeed."