Turkey on Sunday voted in a momentous election that could extend President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s 21-year grip on power or put the mostly Muslim nation on a more secular course.
The presidential and parliamentary ballot has turned into a referendum on Turkey’s longest-serving leader and his Islamic-rooted party.
It is also the toughest of more than a dozen that Erdogan has confronted, one that polls suggest he might lose.
The 69-year-old has steered the nation of 85 million through one of its most transformative and divisive eras in the post-Ottoman state’s 100-year history.
The emergence of Kemal Kilicdaroglu and his six-party alliance, a group that forms the type of broad-based coalition that Erdogan excelled at forging throughout his career, gives foreign allies and Turkish voters a clear alternative.
Polls suggest the 74-year-old secular opposition leader is within touching distance of breaking the 50-percent threshold needed to win in the first round.
A runoff on May 28 could give Erdogan time to regroup and reframe the debate.
But he would still be hounded by Turkey’s most dire economic crisis of his time in power and disquiet over his government’s stuttering response to a February earthquake that claimed more than 50,000 lives.
The opposition leader ended his campaign on Saturday by laying carnations at the mausoleum of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk — a revered military commander who created the secular Turkish state.
Erdogan wrapped things up by leading prayers at Istanbul’s iconic Hagia Sophia mosque, a characteristic flourish that openly defied his critics and paid homage to his most fervent followers.
The election is expected to feature heavy turnout among the country’s 64 million registered voters.
The last national election saw Erdogan win 52.5 percent on a turnout of more than 86 percent.
Turkey has no exit polls but tends to count ballots quickly.
Polling stations close at 5:00 pm (1400 GMT) and all reporting restrictions are lifted four hours later. The first results are sometimes published before then.
Voters will also select a new 600-seat parliament.
Polls suggest that Erdogan’s right-wing alliance is edging out the opposition bloc in the parliamentary ballot.
But the opposition would win a majority if it secured support from a new leftist alliance that represents the Kurdish vote.
Roger Barake, with AFP