The raucous protests that have rocked Istanbul over the past week seem to be wrapping up after representatives for the demonstrators met with President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan overnight Thursday. Erdoğan agreed to postpone controversial plans to remake Istanbul’s Gezi Park, which has become the center of the protests, until after a court ruling on the matter. His government had planned to build a shopping center in the shape of an Ottoman-era barracks on the space, igniting resistance from Turkish professionals, students, and workers against what they saw as encroachment by an Islamic government on the country’s secular laws. Three people have been killed and as many as 5,000 detained in Turkey’s worst unrest in years.
