Turkish protesters clash with police during a protest against the government in Antakya on Monday night.

AFP/Istanbul


A 22-year-old man was killed in southern Turkey during fresh protests over the authorities’ violent crackdown on anti-government demonstrations in June, officials and local media said yesterday.
Ahmet Atakan died in hospital on Monday night after being hit in the head by a tear gas canister during clashes between police and around 150 protesters in the southeastern city of Antakya near the Syrian border, the Dogan news agency said.
Local officials disputed that account, saying Atakan had died after falling from a rooftop where he had been throwing stones at police. In a statement, the police also said the youngster had died in a fall.
A preliminary autopsy found Atakan died of “generalised trauma” and “cerebral haemorrhaging”, Dogan reported.
His death is the sixth recorded in protests since demonstrations against the Islamic-rooted government of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, seen as increasingly authoritarian, began in June.
Since then, pockets of unrest have occasionally flared across the country. Atakan was part of a protest against the recent death of another demonstrator in the same city.
Clashes also erupted in Istanbul on Monday, where police fired tear gas and water cannon to disperse hundreds of demonstrators, mostly masked members of far-left groups, who threw rocks and Molotov cocktails and erected barricades.
The demonstrators were protesting over a 14-year-old boy left in a coma when he was struck in the head by a tear gas canister in June.
The teenager, Berkin Elvan, had left his parents’ house in Istanbul to buy bread as violent demonstrations swept the city.
Demonstrators took to social networks to call for further protests in Taksim Square, a focal rallying point in Istanbul, and other neighbourhoods of the city.
Protests were also planned against police violence in the capital Ankara, where for several days university students have clashed with police over a municipal project to build a road across part of the campus of the Middle East Technical University (METU).
The anger over the project has raised echoes of June’s protests, which were triggered by the proposed redevelopment of Istanbul’s Gezi Park.
What started as a relatively small movement to save the park eventually drew an estimated 2.5mn protesters nationwide, in an outpouring of anger against Erdogan and his heavy-handed crackdown against the demonstrations.
More than 8,000 people were injured during the three weeks of demonstrations, according to the Turkish doctors’ union, presenting Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) with its biggest challenge since it came to power in 2002.