Police uses tear gas against ODTÜ protesters denouncing wall on Turkish-Syrian border

ANKARA

The demonstration was held close to the main and busiest entrance of the ODTÜ campus in Ankara late Nov. 17. DAILY NEWS photo, Selahattin SÖNMEZ

Ankara’s Middle East Technical University (ODTÜ) has been the center of fresh tension late on Nov. 17, as the police responded with tear gas and water cannons against protesters who gathered this time to denounce the construction of a wall at the Turkish-Syrian border.

Police crackdowns have become constant since the Metropolitan Municipality moved ahead with a road project passing through the university’s leafy campus and expected to cause the destruction of over 3,000 trees.

Students and activists expressed their indignation to the project in numerous protests on the campus, many of which were met with muscled police interventions.

Groups organized a demonstration close to the A1 entrance of the campus – which is also the busiest and lies next to an avenue congested during rush hours – to call the authorities to stop the construction of the controversial wall in Mardin’s Nusaybin district, which lies right across the Syrian town of Qamishli, at the control of the Syrian Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD). Protesters also denounced the border troops’ killing of three Syrians who were trying to enter Turkey’s Mardin province.

Some of the protesters put up barricades, which they set on fire to prevent police intervention. Many students were affected by the intense tear gas on the campus.