People gathered in the park to protest the decision, but the demonstrations grew rapidly into a broad protest against Erdoğan's autocratic style, with gatherings in ninety cities. Erdoğan dismissed the demonstrators, who numbered in the hundreds of thousands, as a "few looters," and then turned loose the police in Gezi Park.
But the police cracked down, spurring a broader protest movement that challenged Mr. Erdogan's government, which many Turks view as becoming increasingly authoritarian.
That sit-in grew into a broader protest against the ruling military council which was joined by revolutionary youth groups.
One resident said worshipers, who had been planning to join antigovernment protests, were targeted, while some opposition activists said the Syrian government had itself attacked security forces to make the uprising, which began as a broad-based protest movement, look as if it were devolving into violent extremism.
The protesters were middle-aged mothers, tongue-pierced students, veterans and bearded professional dissenters, who all came together in what organizers described as a broad-based protest of the Bush administration's foreign policy not just in Iraq, but in Haiti and Israel.
While overtly organised to protest the islands transfer, the protests also served as a broad base for anti-government feeling.
In many other countries, too, there is a sense that politics has mutated since the 1960s from an activity organised largely around parties to one organised around specialised interest groups on the one hand (such as America's gun lobby) and broader protest and social movements on the other (such as the women's movement, environmentalism and consumerism).
Yet the initial sit-in group, as well as those participating in the broader protests that followed, represented a broad cross section of society.
What began as a peaceful protest about the destruction of a park to make way for a shopping center has turned into a broader expression of Turkish discontent.
