Turkey decides Erdogan's future in knife-edge vote

ISTANBUL — Turkey on Sunday voted in a momentous election that could extend President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's two-decade rule.

Turnout was expected to be huge in what has effectively turned into a referendum on Turkey's longest-serving leader and his Islamic-rooted party.

It is the toughest of more than a dozen that Erdogan has confronted, one that polls suggest he might lose.

Erdogan, 69, 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.

Turkey has grown into a military and geopolitical heavyweight that plays roles in conflicts from Syria to Ukraine.

The NATO member's footprint in both Europe and the Middle East makes the election's outcome as critical for Washington and Brussels as it is for Damascus and Moscow.

"My hope to God is that after the counting concludes this evening, the outcome is good for the future of our country, for Turkish democracy," Erdogan said after casting his ballot in Istanbul.

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 per cent threshold needed to win in the first round.

A run-off 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.

“We all missed democracy,” Kilicdaroglu said after voting in Ankara. “You will see, God willing, spring will come to this country.”

Heavy turnout

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 per cent on a turnout of more than 86 per cent.

Turkey has no exit polls but tends to count ballots quickly.

Polling stations close at 5:00pm (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.