Sawt Falasteen - Hundreds of thousands join Istanbul protest rally

Under a cloudless blue sky, huge crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey's biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration which starts Sunday, marking the end of Ramadan.

Ozgur Ozel, leader of the main opposition party CHP which organised the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but AFP was unable to independently confirm the figures.

"I'm not scared. I've only got one life, I'm ready to sacrifice it for this country," said an 82-year-old woman in a headscarf, carrying a picture of Imamoglu and the Turkish flag.

She did not want to give her name "in case they come knocking at my door".

"He's an honest man, he's the one who will save the Turkish republic," she said of the mayor who was arrested then jailed over a graft probe on charges widely believed to be spurious.

The mass protests, which began with Imamoglu's March 19 detention, have prompted a repressive government response that has been sharply condemned by rights groups and drawn criticism from abroad.

Widely seen as the only Turkish politician capable of challenging President Recep Tayyip Erdogan at the ballot box, Imamoglu was elected as the opposition CHP's candidate for the 2028 presidential race on the day he was jailed.

He was resoundingly re-elected mayor last year for the third time. The anger over his arrest quickly spread from Istanbul across Turkey.

Nightly protests outside Istanbul City Hall drew vast crowds and often degenerated into running battles with riot police, who used teargas, pepper spray and rubber bullets to disperse the protesters.

"We are here today for our homeland. We, the people, elect our rulers," insisted 17-year-old Melis Basak Ergun, vowing the protesters would never be cowed "by violence or tear gas".

"We stand behind our mayor, Imamoglu."

- 'Keep fighting!' -

Heading for the rally, protesters on board ferries crossing the Bosphorus could be heard chanting: "Everywhere is Taksim, resistance is everywhere!"

It was a reference to Istanbul's iconic Taksim Square, the epicentre of the last massive wave of protests in 2013.

"I joined the rallies outside City Hall for four days together with university students. I told them not to give in," protester Cafer Sungur, 78, told AFP.

"There is no other way than to keep fighting," he said.

"I was jailed in the 1970s but back then there was justice. Today we can't talk about justice any more."

Among those at the protest were Imamoglu's wife Dilek and their children, along with his parents, an AFP correspondent said.

Opposition chief Ozel told French newspaper Le Monde the Saturday rallies would from now on be a weekly event in cities across Turkey, alongside a weekly Wednesday night demo in Istanbul.

"If we don't stop this attempted coup, it will mean the end of the ballot box," he said.

Student groups have kept up their own protests, most of them masked, in the face of a police crackdown that has seen nearly 2,000 people arrested.

The authorities have also cracked down on media coverage, arresting 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deporting a BBC correspondent and arresting a Swedish reporter who flew into Istanbul to cover the unrest.

Eleven journalists were freed Thursday, among them AFP photographer Yasin Akgul.

Swedish journalist Joakim Medin, who flew into Turkey on Thursday to cover the demonstrations, was jailed on Friday, his employer Dagens ETC told AFP.

Reporters Without Borders' Turkey representative Erol Onderoglu said Medin had been charged with "insulting the president" -- a charge often use to silence Erdogan's critics.

"The judicial pressure systematically brought to bear on local journalists for a long time is now being brought to bear on their foreign colleagues," he told AFP.

Turkish authorities held BBC journalist Mark Lowen for 17 hours on Wednesday before deporting him for posing "a threat to public order", the broadcaster said.

Turkish officials said it was due to "a lack of accreditation".

Baris Altintas, co-director of MLSA, a legal NGO helping many of the detainees, told AFP the authorities "seem to be very determined on limiting coverage of the protests".

He added: "We fear that the crackdown on the press will not only continue but also increase."

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I.Yassin--SF-PST