The China Mail - After a week on the streets, Turkey protesters remain defiant

The protests erupted after the March 19 arrest of Istanbul opposition mayor Ekrem Imamoglu as part of a graft and "terror" probe, which the main opposition CHP party slammed as a "coup".

Vast crowds have hit the streets daily, defying a protest ban in Istanbul and other big cities, with the biggest crowds gathering after dark, sparking running battles with riot police.

Ahead of a major rally on Saturday, the CHP appeared to change strategy on Wednesday, urging people to applaud, honk their horns or wave flags from their windows at 1730 GMT.

In Istanbul, crowds of students -- many of them masked -- marched through the Levent business district after a day in which many thousands had flooded the streets chanting: "Government, resign!"

And in the capital, students rallied at Ankara University campus alongside medical students from Haceteppe University and a handful of lecturers from the prestigious Middle East Technical University.

"The pressures exerted on members of the opposition have reached an alarming level," said one robed lecturer who did not give his name.

"In the same way, government pressure on universities, which has been going on for years, has become even worse with recent developments."

- 'Absolutely scandalous' -

By Tuesday afternoon, police had arrested 1,418 people, the interior ministry said.

Among them was AFP photographer Yasin Akgul, who was arrested in a pre-dawn raid on Monday and remanded in custody a day later alongside six other journalists.

The move was sharply denounced by the Paris-based news agency, which said that Akgul had been covering the protests, denouncing his jailing as "unacceptable" and demanding his immediate release.

Reporters Without Borders chief Thibaut Bruttin described the arrests as "absolutely scandalous", urging Turkey to free the journalists, including Akgul.

"These journalists were only doing their job. They have no business being brought before a court. They absolutely must be released," he told AFP.

And a French foreign ministry source said Paris was "deeply concerned by reports of repression against protesters and journalists" in Turkey, noting that Akgul "was covering the protests professionally".

The UN also voiced concern on Wednesday over the court's U-turn on the journalists' fate.

"It is a matter of concern that reportedly the initial decisions of a court in Istanbul to free the journalists were immediately reversed on the prosecutor's intervention," UN Human Rights Office spokeswoman Liz Throssell told AFP.

- 'No room left in the prisons' -

Erdogan, who has repeatedly denounced the protests as "street terror", stepped up his attacks on the opposition with a bitter tirade against the CHP and its leader Ozgur Ozel.

Most nights, the protests have turned into running battles with riot police, whose crackdown has alarmed rights groups.

But there were no such clashes on Tuesday, AFP correspondents said.

Addressing the vast crowds at Istanbul City Hall on Tuesday, Ozel warned Erdogan that the crackdown would only strengthen the protest movement.

"Our numbers won't decrease with the detentions and arrests, we will grow and grow and grow!" he vowed, saying the extent of the crackdown meant there was "no room left in Istanbul's prisons".

Although the crackdown has not reduced the numbers, most students who joined a huge street rally on Tuesday had their faces covered, an AFP correspondent said.

"We want the government to resign, we want our democratic rights, we are fighting for a freer Turkey right now," a 20-year-old student who gave his name as Mali told AFP.

"We are not terrorists, we are students and the reason we are here is to exercise our democratic rights and to defend democracy," he said.

Ozel has called the next major rally for Saturday in the Istanbul district of Maltepe on the Asian side of the city.

B.Clarke--ThChM