Police Preps for Gezi With 25K Officers, 50 TOMAs

Around 25,000 police officers will be deployed in Taksim, Şişli and Beşiktaş on Saturday. While some police officers will be kept in Gezi Park, there will also be some on the access roads. 

Taksim Square will not be closed up with barricades, but gatherings on paths leading to Taksim will not be allowed, reported newspapers.

50 police tanks (TOMA) have also been prepared for the intervention.

Taksim Solidarity group had declared that they would be at Taksim Square on May 31, the first anniversary of the Gezi Resistance.

Governor: We are not closing it, but we could

Istanbul Governor Hüseyin Avni Mutlu also made a declaration on the topic, saying they would not allow gatherings in Taksim for the anniversary.

“Groups small in number sometimes resort to this to achieve their various ends, we will take the related precautions.”

We are not closing Taksim. Why does it from time to time get to the point of closure? If there’s a problem, an incident, we take precautious to ensure security in that region either in a one or two-hour or a one-day process. 

“The government always takes these precautions for the aim of security. Therefore, we want our Taksim, our Gezi Park, and every point in our city to be accessible to our public by the time we desire. We will take precautions about incidents that endanger security in this region.  

“We wish in our hearts for our public to keep using Taksim and Gezi Park as they have been doing.” (AS/PU/BM)

* Click here to read the article in Turkish.