A protester threw a shoe at the director of the International Monetary Fund at the end of his speech at Bilgi University in Istanbul on Thursday in the lead-up to I.M.F. and World Bank meetings.

The protester, Selcuk Ozbek, a student at Anadolu University, shouted, “Get out of the university, I.M.F. thief,” launched a white sneaker and ran toward the podium where the director, Dominique Strauss-Kahn stood. Mr. Ozbek was quickly tackled by security guards. The shoe did not maake it to Strauss-Kahn's head, but instead bounced off another student, landing near the IMF Director's feet.

A female student then tried to unfurl a banner but was also detained by security officials.

Mr. Strauss-Kahn finished his talk and left the room, smiling. “I was glad to meet students and hear their views,” he said in a written statement released afterward. “This is what the I.M.F. needs to do, even if not everyone agrees with us. One thing I learned: Turkish students are polite. They waited until the end to complain.”

Mr. Ozbek was freed by the police later in the evening, as there were no official complaints filed by Mr. Strauss-Kahn.

“I think this is how the global capital should be welcomed wherever it goes,” Mr. Ozbek told to NTV on a live broadcast. “The anti-imperialist youth of any country responsible of their future should act this way.”

The young man said that his shoe was soon returned to him following his protest.

Like his inspiration, Muntader al-Zaidi, the Iraqi journalist who threw a shoe in December at President George W. Bush in Baghdad, Mr. Ozbek, 24, turned out to work at a news outlet. He is a full-time editor with the politics desk at Birgun, a left-wing daily, his department confirmed.

The hurled shoe lost speed after it hit a seated student posing a question with a microphone in hand, and so missed the director, slow-motion television pictures showed. But while a Turkish shoe company claimed to have made Mr. Zaidi’s shoe — a statement that promptly increased its sales worldwide — Mr. Ozbek’s shoe was reported to have been made by Nike.

Halil Guven, the dean of Bilgi University, where the event occurred, said that the university was used to protests because it often serves as a venue for controversial speeches and events.

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan commented on the incident today: "Don't call this a protest. I don't accept this as protest. This is an attack...We have prepared areas for people to make their protests. I consider throwing a shoe as disrespect to Turkish hospitality by imitating the incident that occurred in Iraq. This is not a democratic stance."