PARIS: On Sunday, citizens and trade unions took to the streets in cities around Europe for May Day marches and to send protest messages to their governments, particularly in France, where the holiday honoring workers was being exploited as a rallying cry against freshly reelected President Emmanuel Macron.

May Day is a time when people and their causes are filled with emotion, and authorities are on the lookout. In Istanbul, Turkish police moved rapidly to encircle demonstrators near the closed-off Taksim Square, where 34 people were killed in 1977 when guns were fired into the crowd from a nearby building during a May Day celebration.

According to the Istanbul governor’s office, 164 individuals were arrested on Sunday for demonstrating without permission and resisting police in the square. Thousands of people gathered on the Asian side of Istanbul for a May Day demonstration organised by the Confederation of Progressive Trade Unions of Turkey, singing, chanting, and waving banners.

After a two-year hiatus in the pandemic, an outdoor mega-concert was planned for Rome, with rallies and protests taking place across the country. Apart from work, appeals for an end to Russia’s war in Ukraine were a recurring subject.

The major gathering of Italy’s three main labour unions was held in Assisi, a hilltop town that is frequently the site of peace protests. The slogan for this year is “Working for Peace.”