Closing summary
The Guardian’s live coverage of ongoing events across Europe is coming to an end for today. Protests continue throughout Turkey after Ekrem İmamoğlu – Istanbul’s mayor and top rival to president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan – was jailed yesterday. Here’s what else happened today:
Turkey’s interior minister said 1,133 people had been detained since protests i turkey began on 19 March. There have been large-scale demonstrations in cities across Turkey since last Wednesday.
At least ten journalists were detained in Istanbul and Izmir following the protests. In a post on X, Turkish NGO Media and Law Studies Association said its legal unit was assisting the journalists.
Germany called the jailing of Istanbul mayor and Turkish opposition leader Ekrem İmamoğlu “totally unacceptable” and said it was following the developments with “great concern”. “The arrest and suspension of the mayor of Istanbul is totally unacceptable. This must be clarified very quickly and transparently,” Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s spokesman Steffen Hebestreit told a press conference.
Greenland’s prime minister Mute Egede accused Washington of interfering in its political affairs with the visit of an American delegation later this week to the Danish territory coveted by US president Donald Trump. Usha Vance, the wife of US Vice President JD Vance, will visit Greenland this week with her son and a US delegation including US national security adviser Mike Waltz.
Families gathered to mark the 10-year anniversary of the Germanwings plane crash that killed 150 people in March 2015. Memorials took place at the German high school that lost many students to the disaster and also in Le Vernet, near the crash site in the French Alps.
A nurse accused of murdering nine palliative care patients went on trial in Germany today, with prosecutors saying he played “master of life and death” over them. Prosecutors said the unnamed 44-year-old man injected a total of 26 patients with large doses of sedatives or painkillers, resulting in the deaths of nine.
French actor Gerard Depardieu went on trial today over alleged sexual assaults on a film set. Prosecutors allege assaults against two women – whose full identities have not been revealed – took place during the filming in 2021 of Les Volets Verts (The Green Shutters). Depardieu denies any wrongdoing.
Erdoğan says protests have turned into 'movement of violence'
Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has slammed his opponents, saying protests against the jailing of Istanbul’s mayor, his main political rival, had turned into a “movement of violence”, Reuters reports.
Speaking after a cabinet meeting in Ankara, Erdoğan added that the main opposition CHP was responsible for any property damage and harm to police officers during the protests, which have been taking place across the country since Istanbul mayor, Ekrem İmamoğlu was arrested last week. Erdoğan also said that their “show” would eventually end and they would feel ashamed for the “evil” they did to the country.
Turkey has detained more than 1,100 people, including journalists, as demonstrations continue. The mayor’s imprisonment is widely regarded as a political move to remove a major challenger to Erdoğan from the next presidential race, currently scheduled for 2028.
