Erdo-Gone? Can Turkey's Leader Survive?

By Sunday night, most of the businesses on Istiklal Avenue, the biggest pedestrian street in Istanbul, seemed to have had their front teeth knocked in. ATM screens glared and winked stupidly from behind broken glass monitors. Display windows were smashed up, facades and metal shutters covered with antigovernment graffiti. Near Bekar Street, young people had taken over a number of buildings. Music, along with leftist banners, wafted out from their windows. Profiting from the lack of police, which had withdrawn from the area on June 1, vendors at the northern end of the street hawked bottles of beer, in plain and symbolic defiance of a recent ban on retail sales of alcohol between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m. (The bill, rushed through by parliament last week, hasn’t yet been signed into law by President Abdullah Gul.)