The Beyoğlu Municipality held a fast-breaking dinner in İstanbul’s Taksim Square on Tuesday to mark the beginning of the holy month of Ramadan, while thousands of 
anti-government protesters broke their fast by sitting down for a meal along İstiklal Caddesi, a major pedestrian street that leads to the square.
anti-government protesters broke their fast by sitting down for a meal along İstiklal Caddesi, a major pedestrian street that leads to the square.As police stood watch with water cannon trucks at the ready, the protesters laid a line of newspapers and tablecloths on the street for a makeshift Ramadan banquet that stretched some 500 meters toward the city’s landmark Taksim Square, the center of a wave of demonstrations against Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s government in June. The protests were sparked by a heavy-handed police crackdown on an environmental sit-in at a park near the square.