The leader of Turkey's main opposition Republican People's Party, Özgür Özel, has threatened to gather half a million people in Istanbul City Hall if the police use force against participants in the rally in support of the city's arrested mayor, Ekrem İmamoğlu.
“If you provoke those gathered in the square and do not allow the people there to disperse peacefully, I will gather 500,000 people here tomorrow“, Özel said at a rally of thousands in front of the city hall.
He also said that a new opposition rally would be held on March 29 at noon in the Maltepe district on the Asian side of Istanbul. It will once again, as the opposition leader noted, raise the demand for early presidential elections in Turkey.
The presidential elections are scheduled for 2028. The opposition is demanding an early vote. The AKP has nominated Imamoglu as the opposition's presidential candidate.
The mayor of Istanbul was arrested on corruption charges on March 19. Rallies in support of Imamoglu are being held every day in Turkey, with the largest in Istanbul and Ankara.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio expressed concern to Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan about the arrests and protests in Turkey in recent days, the US State Department said, quoted by Reuters and BTA.
In a meeting with Fidan in Washington, Rubio "noted the progress in bilateral trade recently and encouraged the strengthening of the economic partnership going forward," State Department spokeswoman Tammy Bruce said in a statement.
The Secretary of State met with his Turkish counterpart today to discuss cooperation on key security and trade issues. Rubio asked for Turkey's support for establishing peace in Ukraine and the South Caucasus. He highly appreciated Turkey's leading role in the Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS (the "Islamic State" group - ed. note) and reiterated the need for close cooperation in support of a stable, united and peaceful Syria, which would be neither a base for international terrorism nor a path for destabilizing actions by Iran, the statement said.
This is the first official reaction by the US Secretary of State to the actions of the Turkish government in response to the protests. So far, Washington has limited itself to calls for respect for human rights, notes Agence France-Presse.
Yesterday, demonstrators again took to the streets of Turkey in a protest sparked by the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu - the main rival of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Over 1,400 people have been arrested since the start of the large-scale protests, AFP recalls.