The clashes, in which more than 1,000 people have been injured, have turned into a more general protest against Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan who has been in power for 10 years.
Parts of Istanbul turned to a war zone over the weekend, and the unrest spread to Ankara and other cities.
Police eventually withdrew by Friday evening. Many celebrated a victory and called for the government, widely viewed as authoritarian, to resign.
“This excessive violence once again shows that this government is intolerant of dissent and restrictive of dissent,” Emma Sinclair-Webb, senior Turkey researcher at Human Rights Watch, told the Guardian newspaper. “But this is a new low, even for Turkey.”
Commentators are wondering whether an environmental protest to protect a park could turn into a “Turkish Spring.”
