Police firing water cannons and tear gas have dispersed protesters who erected street barricades near Turkey's parliament overnight.
It was the latest face-off between authorities and demonstrators over the government's response to a protest sit-in that began more than two weeks ago at a coveted Istanbul park.
The pre-dawn melee today in Ankara on a street also close to the US Embassy came hours after Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's government asked a small delegation of protesters to persuade the hundreds of others occupying Gezi Park to leave.
Erdogan has promised to let the courts and a possible referendum decide the fate of a park redevelopment project that has sparked Turkey's biggest protests in decades. His supporters were planning weekend counter demonstrations in Ankara and Istanbul.
