(SOUNDBITE OF POTS AND PANS BANGING)
MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
That is people banging pots and pans outside their windows in Istanbul - a nightly show of support for pro-democracy protesters. Hundreds have been arrested at demonstrations in past weeks. They are calling for the release of an imprisoned presidential candidate and political rival of Turkey's president. Durrie Bouscaren reports.
DURRIE BOUSCAREN, BYLINE: In Turkey, most people aren't going to work the week after Ramadan. School's out. Offices are closed. Gulizar Tuncer had planned a week of relaxing, seeing family. Instead, she's meeting with lawyers and visiting her 20-year-old son Jana Gunes in a high-security prison.
GULIZAR TUNCER: (Speaking Turkish).
BOUSCAREN: "They were marching against injustice and corruption," Tuncer says. "They were there with their teachers and even escorted by police."
Two days after the protest, police arrested Gunes from his home in an early-morning raid. He was charged with participating in an illegal demonstration outside Istanbul's city hall, which was attended by tens of thousands of people and many of his classmates.
TUNCER: (Speaking Turkish).
BOUSCAREN: "The whole point of these arrests is that it's intimidation," his mother says. "That's why the arrests have turned into punishment."
Gunes, a first-year student at Galatasaray University, has always felt strongly about human rights, his mother says. He planned to study philosophy.
TUNCER: (Speaking Turkish).
BOUSCAREN: "After years of sadness and despair in this country, they have become the voice of hope and resistance," Tuncer says. "That's why the current powers have focused on the students."
About 300 college students are among some 1,900 people arrested in connection with the protests since March 19. Some were beaten during their arrest, suffering broken bones or injuries to their face, lawyers say.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
BEDIA BUYUKGEBIZ: (Speaking Turkish).
BOUSCAREN: In a video posted to Instagram, attorney Bedia Buyukgebiz is visibly upset after visiting student protesters in prison.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
BUYUKGEBIZ: (Speaking Turkish).
BOUSCAREN: "They don't have basic necessities like pads or toothbrushes," she says. "They're staying in the same cells as people accused of murder. Others were subject to strip searches for no apparent reason," she says.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
BUYUKGEBIZ: (Speaking Turkish).
BOUSCAREN: "It's illegal, it goes against the constitution and it's against human dignity," Buyukgebiz says.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his allies have insisted that the charges against jailed Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu are legitimate. On Sunday, Erdogan claimed that the opposition had, quote, "lost their consciousness by targeting public safety and the economy in order to cover up the cycle of corruption and bribery." Selim Koru, a Turkish political expert and author based in London, says the administration extended the Ramadan holiday in the hopes that the protests would cool off.
SELIM KORU: They probably didn't anticipate this much noise, and they probably didn't anticipate this degree of organization on the opposition's side.
BOUSCAREN: Rallies in support of Imamoglu have attracted hundreds of thousands of people. Tomorrow, protesters have called for a full boycott, asking people to buy absolutely nothing over the course of the day.
KORU: The idea that you and I go to the ballot box, we vote for somebody and then that person represents us - that is sacred in Turkey. And if you disrupt that, people will, I think, remember.
BOUSCAREN: The question is how long that momentum will last.
For NPR News, I'm Durrie Bouscaren, Istanbul.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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