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EU Enlargement Commissioner Štefan Füle has said in Istanbul that Turkey must investigate the excessive use of force by police against anti-government protesters.
Štefan Füle was speaking ahead of talks on Turkey’s ambition to join the EU.
In response, Turkish PM Recep Tayyip Erdogan said similar protests in Europe would be dealt with more harshly.
Turkey has seen a week of civil unrest sparked by a police crackdown on a local protest over an Istanbul park.
Štefan Füle and Recep Tayyip Erdogan were both speaking at a conference in Istanbul on Turkey’s relations with the EU.
The EU enlargement commissioner said the EU had no intention of giving up on Turkey’s accession, but Turkey had to maintain values of freedom and fundamental rights.
He urged a “swift and transparent” investigation and those responsible should be held to account.
“Peaceful demonstrations constitute a legitimate way for groups to express their views in a democratic society,” Štefan Füle said.
“Excessive use of force by police against these demonstrations has no place in such a democracy.”
In response, Recep Tayyip Erdogan accused the EU of double standards, saying police in Europe and the US used similar methods.
The Turkish government has acknowledged that police used excessive force against the original protest over the planned redevelopment of Gezi Park in Istanbul.
But they say the wider protest movement that ensued in cities across the country has been hijacked by extremists.
EU Enlargement Commissioner Štefan Füle asked Turkey to investigate the excessive use of force by police against anti-government protesters
Last night Recep Tayyip Erdogan called for an immediate end to the demonstrations, saying they bordered on illegality.
In a defiant speech to supporters on his return from a four-day tour off North Africa, he accused the protesters of looting and said they had lost democratic credentials.
Turkey’s hopes of EU membership will not be helped by the worst civil unrest for decades.
Turkey formally applied to join in 1987 and started accession talks in 2005.
Human rights concerns have always been an important obstacle to Turkey’s membership bid, along with the division of Cyprus and other issues.
But both France and Germany have recently softened their stance on Turkish accession.
On Thursday night Recep Tayyip Erdogan was welcomed back to Turkey by thousands of cheering supporters who waited at the airport to greet him.
He responded to calls for his resignation by referring to his election victory in 2011 when he took 50% of the vote.
“They say I am the prime minister of only 50%. It’s not true. We have served the whole of the 76 million from the east to the west,” he told the crowd.
It was the first major show of support for Recep Tayyip Erdogan following a week of protests in which his opponents have called for him to resign.
Four people, including a police officer, are reported to have died since the protests began, with thousands more hurt and hundreds arrested.
Interior Minister Muammer Guler has said that more than 500 police officers are among the injured.
The protesters accuse Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s government of becoming increasingly authoritarian and trying to impose conservative Islamic values on a secular state.
Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) has governed Turkey since 2002, winning successive election victories.
Writer Stephane Hessel, the former French Resistance fighter whose 2010 manifesto Time for Outrage inspired social protesters, has died at the age of 95.
Stephane Hessel died overnight, his wife Christiane Hessel-Chabry told France’s AFP news agency in Paris.
A German by birth, Stephane Hessel was imprisoned in Nazi camps during World War II for his activities in France.
In Time for Outrage, Stephane Hessel called for a new form of “resistance” to the injustices of the modern world.
He expressed outrage at the growing gap between haves and have-nots, France’s treatment of illegal immigrants and damage to the environment.
The Indignados protest movement in Spain was inspired by Stephane Hessel’s manifesto, according to Spanish media.
His name was the top trending term on Twitter in Spain and France on Wednesday morning, as admirers paid tribute with quotes such as: “To create is to resist, to resist is to create.”
French President Francois Hollande said he had learnt “with great sadness” about Stephane Hessel’s death.
“His capacity for indignation knew no bounds other than those of his own life,” he said in a statement.
“As that comes to an end, he leaves us a lesson: to refuse to accept any injustice.”
Born of Jewish origin on October 20, 1917, in Berlin, Stephane Hessel arrived in France at the age of eight.
His parents Franz and Helen Hessel (born Grund) inspired two of the characters in Francois Truffaut’s classic romantic film Jules And Jim.
Writer Stephane Hessel, the former French Resistance fighter whose 2010 manifesto Time for Outrage inspired social protesters, has died at the age of 95
A naturalized French citizen from 1939, Stephane Hessel became a prominent Resistance figure, says French news agency AFP. He was arrested by the Gestapo and later sent to the Buchenwald and Dora concentration camps.
After the war, Stephane Hessel worked as a French diplomat at the UN, where he was involved in compiling the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
However some, like the French Jewish activist Gilles-William Goldnadel, have accused him of exaggerating his role in the work.
According to Giles-William Goldnadel, France’s leftist press idealized the former Resistance fighter, a strong critic of Israeli policy, as a “secular saint”.
Stephane Hessel’s diplomatic postings also included Vietnam in the 1950s and Algeria in the 1960s.
In France, Stephane Hessel took up the cause of illegal immigrants and championed the rights of the oppressed.
Time for Outrage, which has sold more than 4.5 million copies in 35 countries, argues that the French need to again become outraged like those who participated in the wartime Resistance.
Whether Stephane Hessel inspired the global Occupy movement, as some have argued, is more open to debate.
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Anti-Putin protesters have begun marching in Russia’s capital Moscow, ahead of a major rally to demand fresh elections and a new president.
The protest, on a national holiday, comes a day after police raided the homes of several prominent activists.
They were all ordered to report for questioning on Tuesday, and so were likely to miss the march.
Last week, President Vladimir Putin signed a new law increasing fines for those who violate protest laws.
Vladimir Putin won a third presidential term in March amid protests over alleged fraud in December’s parliamentary vote.
This is the first big anti-government rally in Russia since Vladimir Putin returned to the Kremlin.
There are tens of thousands of protesters, a sea of flags, banners and placards flowing through the centre of Moscow.
Anti-Putin protesters have begun marching in Russia's capital Moscow, ahead of a major rally to demand fresh elections and a new president
The demonstrators have been chanting “Putin is a thief” and “Russia without Putin”.
Vladimir Putin appears to be taking a harder line against the opposition.
Shortly before the rally, independent media websites went down with news agencies reported difficulty reaching that of the Novaya Gazeta newspaper.
Mikhail Zygar, editor-in-chief of the Dozhd (Rain) TV channel, said its website had come under attack by hackers.
“We’re trying to get back on track. The attack started at 11:00,” he told the Interfax news agency.
Those targeted by police on Monday included leading opposition activists Alexei Navalny, Sergei Udaltsov and his wife Anastasia.
They all arrived for questioning at the headquarters of the Russian investigative committee on Tuesday morning.
It is a rather unsubtle attempt by the authorities to stop them from participating in the protest, our correspondent says.
Police also searched the home of Ksenia Sobchak – a well-known TV presenter and daughter of Vladimir Putin’s late mentor and St Petersburg mayor Anatoly Sobchak – who has joined the protest movement.
“People barged in at 8:00 a.m., gave me no chance to get dressed, robbed the apartment, humiliated me,” Anatoly Sobchak said in a Twitter post.
“I never thought we would return to such repression in this country.”
Sergei Udaltsov told reporters that police had “rifled through everything, every wardrobe, in the toilet, in the refrigerator. They searched under the beds”.
Alexei Navalny said police seized computer disks containing photos of his children, along with clothes including a sweatshirt bearing an opposition slogan.
Federal investigators have summoned the opposition leaders to appear for questioning just one hour before the scheduled start of the rally.
Following the raids, US State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said Washington was “deeply concerned by the apparent harassment of Russian political opposition figures on the eve of the planned demonstrations on June 12”.
“Taken together, these measures raise serious questions about the arbitrary use of law enforcement to stifle free speech and free assembly,” she said.
The searches also triggered a wave of protest from Russian bloggers, who compared the actions to those of Stalin’s secret police in the 1930s.
The raids may draw new supporters to the anti-Putin cause.
In a separate development in Warsaw, thousands of Russian fans are due to mark their national holiday with a march through the city ahead of their Euro 2012 match against co-host Poland.
It will be heavily policed in what the authorities say is the “greatest ever” security challenge.
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New protests are taking place in Moscow and other Russian cities following Vladimir Putin’s victory in last weekend’s presidential election.
Almost 20,000 people lined one of central Moscow’s main avenues.
However, this was much lower than the turnouts that followed December’s parliamentary election, which the opposition said was rigged.
Similar allegations have surrounded the presidential vote, which saw Vladimir Putin secure a third term.
Foreign states have accepted Vladimir Putin’s election but observers said the poll had been skewed in his favor.
Some opposition leaders had played down expectations of a huge turn-out on Saturday, partly because their movement had failed to stop Vladimir Putin securing another term.
The Moscow protest took place on Novy Arbat, a vast avenue lined by 1960’s skyscrapers.
Dozens of police and military vehicles were stationed on nearby streets.
The city authorities had allowed a rally of up to 50,000 people.
However, the figure appeared much lower than this. The opposition said 25,000 people had attended. Agence France-Presse quoted police as putting the figure closer to 10,000.
The Moscow protest took place on Novy Arbat, a vast avenue lined by 1960’s skyscrapers
On a cold but sunny Moscow day, demonstrators waved banners and wore white ribbons – the symbol of the protest movement.
Protest organizer Vladimir Ryzhkov told the crowd: “These authorities are illegitimate. The same people are in power, the same people who took away our right to choose, the same people who destroyed freedom of speech and political competition.
“We will continue to demand deep political reforms and new elections.”
Sergei Udaltsov, one of the protest organizers, called for a million-strong march to take place in Moscow in May, a week before Vladimir Putin’s inauguration.
Another opposition leader, former chess grandmaster Garry Kasparov, told the crowd: “This was not an election. This was a special operation from a thug who wanted to return to the Kremlin.”
Sergei Udaltsov was among about a dozen protesters who were later arrested by police, AFP news agency said.
It added that police detained a number of people at an unauthorized rally on Saturday in St Petersburg.
Last Monday, a day after the election, police arrested about 250 protesters in Moscow and another 300 in St. Petersburg.
Vladimir Putin was re-elected for six years, having served two previous terms as president between 2000 and 2008.
On Friday, US President Barack Obama called Vladimir Putin from Air Force One “to congratulate him on his recent victory”, a White House statement said.
Barack Obama said he looked forward to hosting Vladimir Putin at the G8 Summit in May at Camp David.
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