“For the first time,” Mr. Yilmazturk added, “the government responded to us positively.”

As night fell Thursday and Istanbul girded for a decisive police raid on Gezi Park that officials had said was imminent, Mr. Erdogan shifted strategy once again by inviting the protest organizers to his home for talks. As protest leaders hurried to the airport, a measure of calm and a sense of reprieve descended over the park. Once again Mr. Erdogan, in handling a crisis that began with a relatively minor urban development issue but morphed into a broad uprising against his rule, had inserted himself in a matter that in other countries would have long been settled by a local planning board.

After over a decade of Mr. Erdogan and his religiously conservative Justice and Development Party in power, Turks have become accustomed to a micromanaging leadership style in which no matter is too small to merit the attention of the prime minister and even big foreign policy decisions pivot on the emotions and whims of one man.

“Over the last decade he’s become the sun around which all of Turkish politics revolves,” said Steven A. Cook, a Turkey expert at the Council on Foreign Relations. “The prime minister is surrounded by yes people who won’t make a decision without his approval.”

So deeply, in fact, that he has personally ordered revisions to the blueprints for a planned mosque in Taksim Square, a long-held dream of the Islamist movement in Turkey and a favorite project of Mr. Erdogan’s. He has said which shawarma and kebab shops should be demolished, and given his input on the lighting for a new bridge over the Bosporus.

In foreign policy issues, a sense of personal insult felt by Mr. Erdogan can incite drastic shifts, as it did in 2009 after Israel launched an offensive on Gaza just after the Israeli prime minister, Ehud Olmert, visited Turkey. “He was made to look like he was weak or too compliant to stop the Gaza operation,” Mr. Cook said. “That’s how he felt.”