Turkish Police Fire at Secularist March

The protest was against a perceived increasingly Islamist and totalitarian Turkish government

Turkish police fired tear gas and water cannon to disperse thousands of secularists protesting at a banned rally in the capital on Monday against what they see as an increasingly authoritarian and Islamist government.

The scenes of chanting men and women draped in Turkish flags and carrying banners portraying the country's founding father Mustafa Kemal Ataturk highlight a longstanding division in Turkish society between staunch secularists on the one hand and more conservative religious Turks on the other.