Over 50,000 police officers flooded Istanbul, shutting down major transportation networks and arresting more than 400 protesters in response to mass May Day demonstrations across Turkey’s largest city. The crackdown came amid heightened political tensions following the arrest and jailing of opposition presidential candidate Ekrem Imamoglu, the now former mayor of Istanbul and principal challenger to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Turkey’s 2028 presidential elections.
Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya confirmed on X that “407 protesters were arrested in Istanbul,” while the Istanbul governor’s office reported that 52,656 police officers were deployed throughout the city. The operation involved halting key metro, bus, and ferry services and locking down access to Taksim Square, a traditional site for labor protests that has been off-limits to demonstrations since 2013.
Agence France-Presse (AFP) journalists on the ground reported several dozen arrests in neighborhoods on the European side of the city. Authorities also detained 100 individuals the previous day for allegedly planning to protest in Taksim, bringing the total number of reported arrests over two days to more than 500. “The number of arrests that have been reported to us exceeds 400,” the Istanbul branch of the CHD lawyers group wrote on X.
While thousands joined authorized labor union rallies on the Asian side of Istanbul, the city’s core was effectively paralyzed. “They blocked all the streets, as if it’s a state of emergency,” a student named Murat told AFP. “That shows the government is scared.”
The clampdown has drawn sharp criticism from human rights groups. Amnesty International urged the Turkish government to reverse its ban on protests in Taksim. “The restrictions on May Day celebrations in Taksim Square are based on entirely spurious security and public order grounds and… must be urgently lifted,” said Dinushika Dissanayake, the group’s specialist on Europe.
The Erdogan administration’s aggressive security measures and the targeting of its main political opposition have raised new concerns about democratic freedoms in Turkey. The May Day demonstrations are the latest in a series of protests that have erupted across Turkey since the detention of Imamoglu, resulting in the arrests of civilians, students, and journalists, and mass online censorship by the government in Ankara.
