JNN 14 Sept 2013 Istanbul : Clashes have erupted once again between Turkish riot police and anti-government protesters who were on the streets for the fourth consecutive day to condemn the recent killing of a young fellow demonstrator in a tense border region with Syria appears more complex, sectarian and volatile.

On Thursday, security forces fired teargas and water cannons to break up the gatherings in the capital Ankara and the city of Istanbul. Outraged protesters also hurled petrol bombs and firecrackers at police.

The protesters are angry over the death of 22-year-old Ahmet Atakan, who was killed on September 9 after being hit in the head with a tear gas canister during a protest rally to denounce Ankara’s handling of recent nationwide demonstrations in the southern city of Antakya.

However, local officials have denied the account of his death, saying the youngster died after falling from a rooftop during the skirmishes.

Atakan’s killing is the sixth recorded death in protest rallies since anti-Ankara demonstrations began in June. The Turkish government has also arrested many activists, among them high school students, on allegations of inciting unrest across the country.

In June, a peaceful sit-in aimed at saving Istanbul’s central Gezi Park from being razed prompted a violent police response. Thousands of protesters were injured after the protests spiraled into nationwide demos against the administration of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

But this round of demonstrations was sparked far from Istanbul and in a very different way — the death of 22-year-old Ahmet Atakan, killed under disputed circumstances during a protest Sunday in the southern city of Antakya.

Thousands of protesters in Istanbul, Ankara and Antakya, many chanting Atakan’s name, have clashed with police every night since then. Young, liberal protesters, the focus of the June demonstrations, have joined, but the epicenter of this week’s protests has shifted to Antakya and has been swelled by grievances of minority groups.

The galvanizing factors seem to be anger at Erdogan and a call for greater civil liberties.

“The government has sought to divide us, but has succeeded in bringing a lot of different people to the same cause,” says Oyku Akman, 21, a student at the Middle East Technical University, who has participated in both rounds of demonstrations.

Atakan, the face of the protests, came from a family of Alevis, a Shiite sect that comprises Turkey’s largest religious minority in the mostly Sunni country.

Shunned as heretics by many Turks, Alevis have long-standing grievances about discrimination and religious freedom. To complicate matters, they are close to Syrian Alawites, and tend to back the Syrian government of President Bashar Assad, an Alawite. A big part of their current grievances is Erdogan’s strong stance against Assad.

In an interview with The Associated Press this week, Zafer Atakan outlined his brother Ahmet’s grievances, blaming Erdogan’s AKP party for egging on outside powers to intervene in Syria.

“Ahmet’s aim was to stop AKP’s fascism and the imperialist interventions all over the world,” he said.

Meanwhile, the armed wing of the Kurdish PKK rebels, noting Atakan’s death, has called for followers to join the demonstrations this week. The call comes as the group is suspending a pullout from Turkey as part of talks with the Turkish government about ending a nearly three-decade conflict that has cost thousands of lives. The government says it is preparing a package of democratic reforms to meet some of the Kurdish demands.

Protesters say the police have continued the aggressive tactics that turned a local Istanbul protest in late May against the government’s plan to demolish a city park into a national expression of dissent.

But the government has changed one tactic: Instead of having Erdogan intervene directly with blunt comments praising the police and deriding protesters, so far he has remained silent on the latest protests, which have also received relatively little attention in the Turkish press.

Asli Aydintasbas, a columnist for the Turkish daily Millyet, says she expects the protests to continue.

“The current situation is not sustainable,” she says. “Turkey is either going to get more democratic or more authoritarian.”

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