Turkish riot police fired teargas and water cannon to try to clear protesters from a central Istanbul park on Saturday evening, hours after Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan warned that police were ready to intervene.
_0">"We have our Istanbul rally tomorrow. I say it clearly: Taksim Square must be evacuated, otherwise this country's security forces know how to evacuate it," Erdogan had told tens of thousands of supporters at a rally in the capital Ankara.