Protest leaders bail out of talks with Turkish PM after clashes

Protest leaders canceled plans Wednesday to meet with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, saying the previous night's violence in Istanbul's Taksim Square and Gezi Park showed talks would be fruitless. Riot police used massive amounts of tear gas, water cannons and stun guns to break up protesters' large-scale demonstration

Tuesday night.

Erdogan was going ahead with meeting some "popularists," including figures from the protests in Gezi Park, the country's semiofficial Anadolu Agency reported. But protest leader Eyup Muhcu said those attending the meeting are friendly with Erdogan's government. Wednesday began quietly, with rain blanketing the ruins of days of rowdy protests.Protesters have faced off with police on the streets of Istanbul for two weeks. What began in late May as a demonstration focused on the environment -- opposition to a plan to build a mall in Gezi Park -- has evolved into a crusade against Erdogan that's spread around the country.Protesters and 'troublemakers' Not all organizers were invited to the talks to begin with, Muhcu said. Erdogan's government discerns between ecologists who started the protests in an attempt to save the park from bulldozers and Marxist extremists, who have lobbed rocks and Molotov cocktails at police, said Ibrahim Kalin, the prime minister's chief adviser, referring to the latter as "troublemakers." "Anywhere in the world, they will not be considered peaceful protesters," Kalin told CNN's Christiane Amanpour on Tuesday. He said some were associated with a group that carried out an attack on the U.S. Embassy in Ankara in February. The police reaction has been no different from that of security forces' methods against similar groups at Occupy Wall Street protests in the United States, he said. "The police obviously have the mandate to establish public order," Kalin said, just like they do in Spain, Sweden and Britain.

Protests from urban professionals

A heavy hand and rhetoric from Erdogan have left little room for dissent and have long been a thorn in the side of many secular Turks, who voted against the government. These are the protesters, many of them urban professionals, who have crowded into the park and called for an end to Erdogan's 10 years at the government's helm.They say they have had little place at the table in the government, which is supported mainly by rural, religious conservatives.

Human rights record

Experts and human rights groups agree with this large group of Turks that Erdogan's democratically elected government lags when it comes to human rights and freedom of expression by opponents. "Prosecutors and courts continued to use terrorism laws to prosecute and prolong incarceration of thousands of Kurdish political activists, human rights defenders, students, journalists and trade unionists," Human Rights Watch wrote in a 2013 report on Turkey. Turkish journalists are afraid to write anything critical of the government, and media companies are slapped with huge tax fines for covering uncomfortable topics. According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, Turkish authorities have targeted journalists with detention for covering the protests. Erdogan's dilemma is in how he handles those who did not elect him, said CNN's Fareed Zakaria. "He has come to believe that he speaks for all of Turkey."

Why Taksim Square matters to Turks

Those who are against him are handled in "too authoritarian" a manner, Zakaria said Tuesday on "Piers Morgan Live." The prime minister has said he will not back down. "They say the prime minister is harsh," Erdogan said Tuesday, referring to his detractors. "I'm sorry," he told a gathering of his own party. "The prime minister is not going to change." Erdogan is tightening his grip on power, adding authority to the office of the presidency, which he hopes to hold in coming years. Former U.S. intelligence chief John Negroponte said he believes the protests could have something to do with Erdogan's ambitions. There may be "forces joining in here, whose aim it is to prevent him from achieving his ambition of becoming the next president of the country," he told Morgan.