Pro-Kurdish protests became violent on Sunday in Istanbul, when police tried to disperse crowds with truncheons and tear gas. Protestors in support of jailed leader of the Kurdistan Workers' Party Abdullah Ocalan demonstrated in and around Istanbul after not being allowed to attend a rally planned in Bursa. After the violence broke out, protestors hurled stones at a bank in Sisli, and at a police station in Beyoglu while a bus was set on fire in the Gazi neighborhood.

Riot police fired shots into the air to try and disperse a crowd of around 150 people protestors who blocked a highway in the Kadikoy district, reported the Anatolian News Agency (AA).