Turkey must lift ban on May 1 demos in Istanbul's Taksim Square

Turkey must lift its "spurious" ban on May Day demonstrations in Istanbul's Taksim Square, Amnesty International said Wednesday after police detained around 100 people who allegedly planning to protest there.

"The restrictions on May Day celebrations in Taksim Square are based on entirely spurious security and public order grounds and... must be urgently lifted," said Dinushika Dissanayake, Amnesty's deputy regional director for Europe in a statement.

Demonstrations have been banned there since the 2013 Gezi Park protests which spread across Turkey and were brutally suppressed by the police, claiming eight lives and leaving thousands injured.

Since then the government has tightly controlled any form of protest at the sprawling plaza, banning any kind of gathering, be it for May Day, International Women's Day or Pride marches.

Since Monday, police have staged a string of pre-emptive raids across the city, rounding up more than 100 people who called for May Day rallies at Taksim Square, media reports said.

The move came after Istanbul's chief public prosecutor issued a warrant for the detention of 108 people.

As happens every year ahead of 1 May, the square has been sealed off with a sea of metal barriers and many thousands of police likely to be deployed to prevent any violations.

Earlier on Wednesday, police rounded up another 20 people, Turgut Delioglu, chairman of the DISK labour union's media section, told AFP.

He said the union would gather on Thursday in Kadikoy on the Asian side of the city where police were not expected to intervene.

Taksim Square was fenced off last month following the arrest and jailing of Istanbul's opposition mayor, Ekrem Imamoglu, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's biggest political rival.

The move against him sparked the biggest wave of anti-government protests in Turkey since Gezi.

Earlier this month, Istanbul governor Davut Gul said anyone seeking to defy the ban on demonstrations at Taksim would be prosecuted.

"For many years, no demonstrations have been allowed in Taksim Square and Istiklal Avenue due to security reasons... persistently calling for assembly in this area is a provocation," he wrote on X on 19 April, warning those who did would face criminal charges.

Amnesty said the ban defied a 2023 ruling by Turkey's Constitutional Court which found the restriction on marking May Day at the square violated unions' rights to freedom of assembly.