Erdogan blames Turkey protests on extremists as stocks plunge Turkey's stock market plunged 10.47 per cent - the biggest fall in a decade - on Monday, the fourth day of large-scale clashes between demonstrators and police, as investors worried that the unrest could damage the country's economy. Borsa Istanbul fell more than 10 per cent on a day when Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey's prime minister, suggested that foreign countries and domestic extremists were behind the unrest and said his intelligence services were working on the issue. You need JavaScript active on your browser in order to see this video. Yields on two-year Turkish lira bonds jumped by a record-breaking 71 points to 6.78 per cent while the lira recovered from an opening 2 per cent fall against the dollar to trade 0.4 per cent down at TL1.88. Mr Erdogan dismissed investor concerns, saying: "It's the stock market, it goes down and it goes up. It can't always be stable. "This is another blow to an already weak growth outlook," said Murat Ucer, an economist at GlobalSource Partners in Istanbul. The unrest is a serious dent to confidence and the context is already very fragile. But he discounted any suggestion of a financial crisis. Turkey is largely reliant on portfolio capital to finance its current account deficit and growth has already slowed from 8.8 per cent in 2011 to 2.2 per cent last year. Mr Erdogan's government, which has presided over a dramatic rise in living standards over a decade, has big ambitions to renew the country's infrastructure and host the 2020 Olympics - but foreign direct investment has sometimes been slow to come. Tim Ash, head of emerging market research at Standard Bank, said in a note that he would recommend that investors reduce exposure to Turkey. "Simply put on a risk-rewards basis, Turkey does not appear to offer convincing value at present, and investors would be well advised to adopt a cautious approach," Mr Ash wrote. Clashes resumed in central districts of Istanbul and Ankara, although tensions fell later in the night in the Beshiktas district - scene of some othe worst previous confrontations - after police and protesters came to an understanding. A doctors" group said that more than 1,800 people had been wounded in the protests, with one person dying when a taxi ploughed into protesters. What kind of expressions could I use to calm things down? Mr Erdogan told a news conference at Istanbul airport before his planned departure on an official visit to Morocco. Be calm, relax, all this will be overcome. However, Turkey's president Abdullah Gul, whose role is largely ceremonial but has counselled restraint in recent days, sought to strike a conciliatory note. "Democracy does not mean elections alone," he said. The views that are well intentioned have been read, seen and noted and the messages have been received. Kesk, the public sector workers" union with 240,000 members, said it would go on strike on Tuesday, stepping up its plans for action. The union had announced its plans to strike against new civil service rules two weeks ago but said it was now also calling for a democratic Turkey to support the Gezi Park movement. US secretary of state John Kerry said the US was "deeply concerned" about the violence in Turkey and by reports of excessive use of force by Turkish police, and called for restraint. In a sign that support went beyond Turkey's middle class secularists, people in some of Istanbul's more religious neighbourhoods banged pots and pans in support of the demonstrations on Sunday night, with some Islamist figures also privately criticising Mr Erdogan for his alleged authoritarian tendencies. Mr Erdogan's plans to replace Gezi Park, adjoining Taksim, with a reconstruction of an Ottoman-style barracks, complete with a shopping mall, sparked the protest last week. But the scale of the police crackdown - including hours of relentless teargas attacks by the police on overwhelmingly peaceful protesters from Friday - has magnified the dispute.