100,000 protestors run wild in Turkey amidst anti-Government demonstrations, Where are the protestors in America?

By EMRE PEKER And AYLA ALBAYRAK

ISTANBUL—Turkish antigovernment demonstrations widened Saturday as more than 100,000 protesters took to the streets in cities across the country, forcing Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan to withdraw riot police from Istanbul's landmark Taksim Square.

But the prime minister, making his first comments on the protest since Wednesday, also struck a defiant tone, labeling his detractors "a minority," and calling on them to cease the protests.

Tens of thousands of people began gathering in areas around Istanbul's central Taksim Square from sunrise on Saturday, while smaller copycat protests emerged in several other Turkish cities, including the capital Ankara, and Izmir. The protests, which began as a smaller campaign to save a downtown park, have evolved into a broader demonstration against Mr. Erdogan's government. The numbers of injured in Friday's clashes in Istanbul climbed sharply overnight to around 1,000, according to volunteer doctors and nurses at a makeshift first-aid coordination center set up close to Taksim Square. 

Mr. Erdogan took a largely uncompromising stance, claiming that his party's support easily eclipsed the numbers attending antigovernment demonstrations. "Don't compete with us.... If you gather 200,000 people, I can gather a million.... This event has been escalated beyond the park and become ideological," Mr. Erdogan said of the protests, which intensified dramatically on Friday. "The police were there yesterday, they are there today, and will be there tomorrow…because Taksim cannot be a square where extremists run wild."