Turkish govt. agrees to suspend park redevelopment plans

PanARMENIAN.Net - The Turkish government says it has agreed to suspend redevelopment plans for an Istanbul park until a court ruling, after talks with protesters, according to BBC News.

The plan to rebuild an old barracks on Gezi Park has sparked Turkey's biggest anti-government protests in decades.

A government spokesman said there would be no attempt to start the project until a court decided whether or not it was legal.

If the court backed the government, the project would be put to a popular vote.

Turkey's prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, held late-night talks in the capital Ankara with delegates from the Taksim Solidarity group.

The negotiations came hours after he had delivered a "final warning" to the protesters to leave the park.

Tayfun Kahraman of the protest group Taksim Solidarity described the prime minister's pledge that the development would not continue before a final court decision as "a positive outcome" from Thursday night's talks.

He said the protesters would evaluate the outcome of the meeting and would present their decision on Friday evening.

Five people have died and thousands have been injured since the protests began in Gezi Park on 31 May, spreading to the adjacent Taksim Square a day later and other cities across Turkey.

The contested park is a rare patch of green in Turkey's biggest city.

Last month, an Istanbul court issued an initial injunction against the plan to cut down trees in the park to make way for an 18th Century replica Ottoman-era military barracks and a shopping centre. The government has appealed against the ruling.

The project was the initial spark for the protests, which then broadened into anti-government demonstrations in several cities.

Protesters have accused Erdogan's government of becoming increasingly authoritarian and of trying to impose conservative Islamic values on a secular state.