Istanbul saw violence erupt overnight, as the anti-government protests enter their fourth day.

Protesters in the Besiktas district ripped up paving stones from the streets to fashion makeshift barricades whilst police used tear gas, pepper spray, and water cannons in an attempt to disperse them. Roads were sealed off in the district, whilst Mosques, shops, and a university were turned into makeshift field hospitals for those injured in the demonstrations with thousands of people taking to the streets. At one point protesters commandeered a JCB from a nearby work-site and drove it at police lines to stem the firing of tear gas.

Nearby, the prime minister’s office was a focus for protest, with police sealing off the surrounding roads in order to push back the demonstrators.

Protests were reported across Turkey overnight, from the capital Ankara, to Adana in the south and Izmir in the west.

The wave protests began last week with demonstrators campaigning against the development of Gezi Park into a shopping mall, but have since spread across the city and to the capital Ankara as more general anti-government protests. The Turkish police have been widely condemned for their heavy use of tear gas, pepper spray, and water cannons on generally peaceful protests, and the violence has caused many more people to come to the streets in protest of Prime Minister Erdogan’s AKP government’s authoritarian tactics and the belief that he is imposing Islamic law on the wider secular population.

Turkish officials have said that 1,700 people have been arrested in the protests over the last three days which have escalated to include 67 towns and cities across the country. The Turkish Doctors’ Association have said that 484 protesters have been treated in hospitals in Istanbul alone since Friday.

Whilst the international media has watched the escalations of the protests with interest, the Turkish media have been nearly universally ignoring the situation, with CNN Turkey showing a nature documentaries during some of the most violent episodes, implying further authoritarian control of the press.

In the US, the White House has called for “calm”, and reaffirmed that they supported peaceful demonstrations as “part of democratic expression”, criticising the Turkish security forces for their heavy handed attempts at suppressing the demonstrations.