Summary Demonstrators flooded back onto the streets in Turkey for the fourth night.
ISTANBUL (AFP) - Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Monday shrugged off mass protests against his Islamic-rooted government but angry demonstrators flooded back onto the streets for the fourth night in an outburst of clashes that have left at least one person dead.
Despite facing the fiercest challenge to his Islamic-rooted government since he came to office in 2002, Erdogan left Turkey earlier Monday on an official visit to North Africa, vowing to "stand firm" against the protests.
He rejected talk of a "Turkish Spring" uprising by Turks who accuse him of trying to impose Islamic reforms on the secular state, and said the situation in his country was "now calm".
Hours after he spoke riot police fired tear gas to disperse protestors massing near his Istanbul office and the nearby stadium of Besiktas football team.
Thousands of other protestors gathered on Taksim Square, the symbolic heart of the nationwide protests.
"Tayyip, resign!" they yelled, waving red flags and banners and blowing whistles.
A medics union earlier Monday said a man had been killed when a car ploughed into protestors in Istanbul on Sunday, the first confirmed death caused by the protests.
The unrest began as a local outcry against plans to redevelop Gezi Park, a rare green spot adjoining Taksim Square.
After a heavy police response it grew into wider anti-government protests in Istanbul, the capital Ankara and other cities across the country.
"We have had enough of the way Erdogan understands democracy and the way he wants to dictate his rules," said Ozgur Aksoy, a young engineer demonstrating in Gezi Park on Monday.
"It s not only about the park here, it is about everything else in the last 10 years. People are angry, very angry."
Rights groups and doctors say more than a thousand people have been injured in clashes in Istanbul and 700 in Ankara.
The government s latest estimate on Sunday put the figure at 58 civilians and 115 security forces injured, with clashes in 67 cities. It also said over 1,700 people had been arrested across the country and that many had since been released.
Erdogan dismissed the protesters as "vandals", rejecting talk of a "Turkish Spring" uprising and stressing that he was democratically elected.
His Justice and Development Party (AKP) has won three successive parliamentary elections, but opponents have expressed mounting concern that Turkey is moving toward conservative Islam.
