Angry residents threw up barricades and hurled rocks and homemade explosives on Wednesday at police overseeing the destruction of a squatter area in the Istanbul suburb of Pendik.
More than 1,000 policemen were at the scene and more reinforcements were called in, CNN-Turk television reported, as residents built barricades of rocks, tires, and debris and hurled sticks, stones, and molotov cocktails to prevent the demolition work.
Riot police and residents, most of them youths, fought pitched battles in the streets of the Ertugrulgazi district, on the Asian shore of this city of 12 million, as officers aboard armored vehicles tried to destroy the barricades.
Police responded with tear gas and arrested three people as municipal teams with bulldozers, trying to work under a hail of stones hurled at the protective security cordon, knocked down about a dozen homes built illegally on state-owned land, the Anatolia news agency reported.
Uncontrolled urbanization and a steady population flow from the countryside to urban areas has resulted in entire neighborhoods of illegally built homes mushrooming in and around Turkey's major cities.
Known as gecekondu (built by night, in Turkish) areas, they generally house people of rural origin who eke out a living in the city, often at menial jobs.
Some of the neighborhoods are razed while others manage to negotiate deals with local governments to ensure their survival and profit from occasional amnesties to flourish and grow into entire suburbs with their own schools and businesses.
AFP
Police, squatters clash as homes razed in Istanbul
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