Turkish unions join anti-state agitations

Pockets of protesters clashed with Turkish riot police on Monday night and a union federation began a two-day strike on Tuesday as anti-government demonstrations in which two people have died stretched into a fifth day.

Hundreds of police and protesters have been injured since Friday, when a demonstration to halt construction in a park in an Istanbul square grew into mass protests against a heavy-handed police crackdown and what opponents call Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan’s authoritarian policies.

A 22-year-old protester was shot dead late on Monday at a rally in the southern town of Antakya near the Syrian border, the provincial governor’s office said, the second death after a taxi hit a demonstrator in Istanbul on Sunday. It was not clear who opened fire there.

Turkey’s leftist Public Workers Unions Confederation (KESK), which represents 2,40,000 members, was due to begin a two-day “warning strike” to protest the police crackdown.

Meanwhile, Turkey’s deputy prime minister has sought to mollify the demonstrators by apologising for a police crackdown on the peaceful protest.