Thousands of people in Turkey have protested incidents of Quran desecration in the United States.

Private NTV television said the protesters have burned U.S. and Israeli flags in the mainly Kurdish city of Diyarbakir on Sunday. Some 200 people staged a similar protest in Istanbul.

A pastor in Florida called off plans to burn copies of the Quran on Sept. 11, but a man burned pages from the holy book outside a planned mosque near New York's ground zero last weekend. A burnt Quran was also found at the entrance of a mosque in Knoxville, Tennessee, The Associated Press reported.