ANKARA: Police fired tear gas and used water cannon on Sunday to disperse protesters in Ankara on the third day of demonstrations against the government of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Authorities took the measures to stop around 1,000 protesters who were attempting to march to the high-security prime minister's office.

Private NTV news network broadcast live images of the protest in downtown Kizilay square.

The nationwide unrest began as a local outcry against plans to redevelop a park near Istanbul's Taksim Square, but after a heavy-handed police response quickly snowballed into broader protests against what critics say is the government's increasingly conservative and authoritarian agenda.

Earlier today:

Protests in Istanbul and several other Turkish cities appeared to have subsided, after days of fierce clashes following a police crackdown on a peaceful gathering.

The private Dogan news agency says on Sunday a few hundred protesters remained at Istanbul's main square, which was the scene of the largest and fiercest anti-government outburst in Turkey in years.

The group lit a bonfire and chanted anti-government slogans in an all-night vigil, but shrank as rain set in.

The demonstrations grew out of anger over a violent police crackdown of a peaceful environmental protest at Istanbul's Taksim Square and spread to other Turkish cities. The government said some 1,000 people were detained during the protests. Hundreds were injured in the clashes.