On Friday, Turkish law enforcement took into custody more than 500 International Workers’ Day protesters who attempted to enter restricted zones in central Istanbul, capping another year of tension between authorities and demonstrators marking the national holiday. For decades, May Day gatherings in Turkey have often erupted into violent confrontations between protesters and police, with Taksim Square — Istanbul’s iconic central public space — consistently designated a prohibited area for demonstrations on security grounds. That ban traces its origins to a bloody 1977 incident, when at least 30 people lost their lives in violent unrest that broke out during May Day protests at the site.
This year, despite the long-standing blockade, small clusters of demonstrators gathered in neighborhoods surrounding Taksim Square throughout the day. Carrying labor union banners and chanting demands for the square to be reopened to public protests, the groups made repeated attempts to push through the heavy police cordon that encircled the area. The primary hub for organized protest shifted to the nearby Mecidiyekoy district, where hundreds of demonstrators converged. Security forces responded to the gathering by deploying water cannons and pepper spray to disperse the crowd, before taking hundreds of participants into custody.
The detentions carry added political and legal context, coming just 24 hours after Turkey’s highest constitutional court issued a landmark ruling. On Thursday, the court found that the right to peaceful assembly of three people detained for 58 days following a 2021 May Day demonstration had been violated, a decision that established a new legal precedent for future cases involving May Day protest restrictions. The ruling had raised expectations among labor organizers that authorities might relax the decades-long ban on Taksim Square gatherings, only for security officials to maintain the restrictions.
In an official statement released Friday, the Istanbul governor’s office noted that all safety precautions and restriction notices had been publicly communicated to the Turkish public well in advance of the holiday. Echoing long-standing government framing of the unrest, the statement blamed “certain marginal groups” for disregarding official rules, adding that clashes with police followed a pattern repeated every year. By 6 p.m. local time on Friday, authorities confirmed that a total of 575 protesters had been detained, marking one of the largest mass detentions at a Turkish May Day demonstration in recent years.