Flames rage behind a protester in the Turkish capital Ankara as the country's biggest cities were rocked by days of some of the most violent riots there in decades.
Hundreds of police and protesters have been injured since May 31 in the unrest, which began with a demonstration to halt construction in a park in an Istanbul square and grew into mass protests against what opponents call Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan's authoritarianism.
28 May 2013 . ISTANBUL, Turkey. REUTERS/Osman Orsal
A Turkish riot policeman fires tear gas as people protest against trees being destroyed in a park on Istanbul's central Taksim Square as part of a government development project.
The demonstrations were started by a small group of environmental campaigners but mushroomed when police used force to eject them, and widened into a broad show of defiance against the government.
31 May 2013 . ISTANBUL, Turkey. REUTERS/Murad Sezer
Riot police use tear gas to disperse the crowd during an anti-government protest at Taksim Square on the day that serious unrest kicked off.
Protests have involved a broad spectrum in dozens of cities, from students to professionals, trade unionists, Kurdish activists and hardline secularists who see Erdogan seeking to overthrow the secularist state set up by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk in 1923 in the ruins of the Ottoman Empire.
31 May 2013 . ISTANBUL, Turkey. REUTERS/Murad Sezer
Some protesters accuse Erdogan of fostering a hidden Islamist agenda and object to tightening restrictions on alcohol sales and other measures seen as religiously motivated. Others complain of the costs from Erdogan's support of rebels in neighbouring Syria's civil war. Still others bear economic grievances, viewing the disputed development project in Taksim Square as emblematic of wild greed among those who have benefited from Turkey's boom.
Erdogan has dismissed the protests as the work of secularist enemies who never reconciled to the mandate of his Islamist AKP party, which has won three straight elections, overseen a period of economic growth and raised Turkey's profile in the region.