Erdem Gunduz said he wanted to take a stand against police stopping demonstrations near the square, Dogan news agency reported.
He stood silently, facing the Ataturk Cultural Centre which was draped in Turkish flags and a portrait of Turkey’s founder Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, from 6 p.m. (1500 GMT) on Monday.
By 2 am (2300 GMT), when the police moved in, about 300 people had joined him. Ten people, who refused to be moved on by police, were detained.
Gunduz, swiftly dubbed ‘standing man’ on social media in Turkey, inspired similar protests elsewhere in Istanbul as well as in the capital Ankara and the city of Izmir on the Aegean coast.
The silent protests were in stark contrast to demonstrations at the weekend, which saw some of the fiercest clashes so far when police fired teargas and water cannon to clear thousands from Taksim Square.
What began in May as a protest by environmentalists upset over plans to build on a park adjoining Taksim has grown into a movement against Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan, presenting the greatest public challenge to his 10-year leadership.
After a weekend of heavy clashes sparked by the eviction of protesters from Istanbul’s Gezi Park, the focal point of the protests, demonstrators struggled to regroup and police have since fought only sporadic battles with smaller groups of demonstrators across the country. Overnight, riot police in the capital Ankara, briefly fired tear gas and used water cannons on protesters who hurled back stones and hid behind makeshift barricades; but there were no other reports of confrontations. In Istanbul, dozens of demonstrators switched to silent protests, standing still, in quiet defiance, in the main Taksim Square located next to Gezi Park.