Turkey — 
After retaking Taksim Square in Istanbul after hours 
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 also cuts to the heart of Turkish identity, as both sides have cast 
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
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