Istanbul Locked Down on Anniversary of 2013 Demos

Turkish police on Tuesday detained over a dozen activists and imposed a heavy security blanket in Istanbul on the third anniversary of protests that posed the biggest challenge to the rule of Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

The May-June 2013 protests began as a grassroots movement to stop plans for the redevelopment of Gezi Park in central Istanbul but snowballed into a wave of nationwide wave of anger against Erdogan.

The demonstrations eventually fizzled out after a heavy-handed police response and the security forces have since reacted harshly with water cannon and tear gas to even the smallest anti-government rallies.

Although there were no signs of any significant plans to mark the anniversary of the protests, which began on May 31, 2013, hundreds of armed police were deployed in Taksim Square next to Gezi Park, with access to both barred to pedestrians, an AFP correspondent said.

Despite the center of the square being fenced off with metal barriers, opposition activists were planning to hold a rally there at 1600 GMT.

Meanwhile, police detained 16 activists at the offices of the city's architects chamber near the Ottoman-era Yildiz Palace, which had opposed the Gezi Park development and strongly backed the protests, local media reports said.

Those detained included the chamber's general secretary Mucella Yapici and lawyer Can Atalay, both prominent figures in the Gezi movement. Reports said they had failed to obey an eviction order.

An AFP reporter saw them being taken away in a police bus. It was not immediately clear if the detentions were linked to the anniversary.

Eight people were killed in the nationwide unrest which followed the Gezi Park protests. Erdogan, who was prime minister at the time, famously rubbished the protesters as "hooligans".

The low-key anniversary came a day after Erdogan laid into the western media for being allegedly "blind, deaf and dumb" to a police crackdown on demonstrators in strike-hit France, despite broadcasting "uninterrupted" coverage of Turkey's 2013 protests.

In apparent response to his words, pro-Erdogan bloggers on Twitter launched a campaign urging people to beware of France as it stages the upcoming Euro football championships in France, under the hashtag #FranceisnotsecureforEuro2016.