ISPARTA,
of ugly street battles with police officers firing tear gas this month,
many of the haggard protesters cracked bottles of Efes beer and raised
them in a mock toast to their prime minister, who had recently pushed
through a law to curb drinking
And even in Isparta, a religiously conservative region that is a
wellspring of support for Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, a small
group of residents, drinks in hand, gathered outside the office of the
local governor who is an ally of the embattled prime minister and
chanted, “Cheers, Tayyip!”
Drinking is far from the only issue held up in the intense
antigovernment protests that have convulsed Turkey for more than a week. But it has become closely intertwined with the broader complaints of
demonstrators fighting what they see as the rising authoritarianism of
the Turkish government.
it as a clash of Islamic and secular values. While protesters have held
up new limits on drinking as an affront to the secular values of modern
Turkey, Mr. Erdogan has said that “religion demands” curbs on drinking.
He has gone so far as to implicitly refer to Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the
founder of Turkey and a notoriously heavy drinker, as a “drunkard,” and
in one of a series of speeches he delivered Sunday to cheering
supporters, accused protesters of taking beer into mosque
s