After an intense night of street clashes that represented the worst violence in nearly three weeks of protests, Mr. Erdogan rallied hundreds of thousands of his supporters on Sunday — many of them traveling on city buses and ferries that the government had mobilized for the event — at an outdoor arena on the shores of the Sea of Marmara. In some of his toughest language yet, he called his opponents terrorists and made clear that any hope of a compromise to end the crisis was gone.

“It is nothing more than the minority’s attempt to dominate the majority,” he said of the protesters. “We will not allow it.”

The escalating tensions have raised the risk of an extended period of civil unrest that could undermine Turkey’s image as a rising global power and a model of Islamic democracy, which Mr. Erdogan has cultivated over a decade in power.

As he spoke, the police fired tear gas and water cannons at demonstrators in Istanbul and in several other cities. In at least two strongholds of support for Mr. Erdogan, the nature of the confrontation seemed to take a more dangerous turn, as antigovernment protesters clashed with his civilian backers. In Mr. Erdogan’s childhood neighborhood in Istanbul, a group of government supporters joined the police with sticks and fought against protesters, according to one witness. In Konya, a conservative town in the Anatolian heartland, government supporters also clashed with protesters, according to a local news report.

Even before Mr. Erdogan took the stage to deliver his nearly two-hour-long speech, the master of ceremonies had bashed the foreign news media, which the prime minister has suggested is part of a foreign plot, along with financial speculators and terrorists, to topple his government.

“CNN International, are you ready for this?” shouted the announcer to the sea of people waving flags bearing Mr. Erdogan’s face and the yellow and white logo of his Justice and Development Party, known by its Turkish initials as A.K.P.

Mr. Erdogan then singled out BBC, CNN and Reuters, saying, “for days, you fabricated news.”

“You portrayed Turkey differently to the world,” he continued. “You are left alone with your lies. This nation is not the one that you misrepresented to the world.”

At least 400 people were detained on Sunday, according to the Istanbul Bar Association, with local news reports saying that some journalists had been among them. One foreign photographer documenting the clashes Saturday night said a police officer had torn his gas mask off him while in a cloud of tear gas, and forced him to clear his memory card of photographs.

Some doctors and nurses who treated protesters were detained by security forces on Sunday, according to the legal offices of the Istanbul Chamber of Doctors. Lawyers have been held by the authorities in recent days. Mr. Erdogan said Sunday that even the owners of luxury hotels near Taksim Square who had provided refuge to protesters fleeing the chaos of the police raid were linked to terrorism.

“We know very well the ones that sheltered in their hotels those who cooperated with terror,” he said at the rally. “Will they not be held accountable? If we do not hold them accountable, then the nation will hold us accountable.”

The last three weeks have laid bare Turkey’s deep divisions between the religious, largely conservative masses who support Mr. Erdogan and the mostly secular and middle class who have joined the protest movement. Their contesting visions of the country played out clearly across Istanbul on Sunday. As Mr. Erdogan’s supporters flocked to his rally, police forces were already firing tear gas at protesters who were trying to march to Taksim Square, which had become the center of the movement before the police cleared the area. 

With a helicopter flying overhead, the police set up barricades and positioned armored vehicles, their water cannons aimed down side streets leading to Taksim. The center of the city once again resembled a war zone, as shops were closed and heavy clashes in central Istanbul continued long into the night.

At Mr. Erdogan’s rally on the seashore, near the walls of the ancient city, enthusiastic government supporters voiced anger at its opponents. Walking up to the rally grounds, people chanted, “Go gas them, Captain! Break their hands!” A helicopter flew overhead to provide panoramic footage for state television. Later, as Erdogan supporters rode buses and trains back to the city center, many removed their A.K.P. hats and discarded their flags, fearful of being targeted by antigovernment demonstrators.

Sabitha Altin, 62, a retired teacher wearing a fuchsia head scarf, said, “I’ve never been to a rally in my life, but today I came because the country is in turmoil and I believe this is the only man who can save it, with our support.”

Ms. Altin acknowledged Mr. Erdogan’s harsh crackdown on protesters, but she said it was necessary to preserve his accomplishments over the last 10 years. “He may seem like he has been coming down on people hard these past few weeks,” she said. “But what do you expect when everything he has built for us over 10 years is torn apart and counts for zero. Anyone would be angry and act in this way.”

Many at the rally took at faith what Mr. Erdogan has been saying for days: that the unrest gripping Turkey is the work of foreigners, and not reflective of the legitimate grievances of the Turks who did not vote for him.

“This whole thing is not as bad as it looks,” Fatma Aygun, 33, said. “It is just a game of the foreign media.”

She added, “Things will be back to normal in three to four days. Taksim will look like this: happy, colorful and festive. We are the majority, and we will make sure of it.”

Mr. Erdogan’s decision on Saturday to order a decisive police raid on protesters camped out in a part of Taksim known as Gezi Park, the last significant green space in the center of Istanbul that protesters mobilized to save from being turned into a mall, marked a turn in the crisis and set off clashes in Istanbul, Ankara and other cities that continued to Sunday night. Days after he appeared ready to compromise by offering the protesters a referendum in which residents of Istanbul would decide the park’s fate, Mr. Erdogan seemed to have run out of patience.

Saving the park from a government plan to replace it with a commercial replica of an Ottoman-era army barracks was the first cause of the protesters. But the movement quickly attracted other disillusioned Turks, who have chafed at what they viewed as the government’s rising authoritarianism, and the movement evolved in to a broader challenge to Mr. Erdogan’s government.

In responding to the crisis, Mr. Erdogan sought to divide the protest movement last week by offering concessions on the park. But by then, it was too late: the movement had already become about much more. By Sunday, Mr. Erdogan sought to thoroughly delegitimize any opposition to his governance, linking the effort to save the park to a recent terrorist attack in Reyhanli, in southern Turkey, which was connected to the Syrian civil war and killed dozens.

“I wonder what these foreigners who came to Taksim Square from all corners of the world were doing,” he said. “We have seen the same plots in Reyhanli.”

SOURCE:The New York Times (www.nytimes.com)