Erdogan eyes presidential triumph in Turkey polls

 Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan was Sunday set to triumph in presidential elections and extend his domination of Turkey as a powerful head of state, despite warnings by opponents that the country is moving to a one-man autocracy.

Erdogan, a devout Muslim who has served as premier since 2003, has overseen a rapid modernisation of Turkey with strong growth and ambitious infrastructure projects but also faces growing accusations of eroding civil rights and seeking to Islamise the secular state.
The polls are the first time Turkey is directly electing its president, who has previously been chosen by parliament and in recent decades has fulfilled a largely ceremonial role.
However 60-year-old Erdogan, who is happy to be referred to as the "Sultan", has made clear he intends to be a head of state who "sweats" and exercises real power.
His ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) has vowed to seek changes to the constitution to give the president more powers, which could give Turkey a presidential system similar to France's rather than its current parliamentary democracy.
Yet Erdogan's opponents accuse him of undermining the secular legacy of Turkey's founding father Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, who based the state that emerged after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire on a strict separation between religion and politics.
"I am voting for stability," said Efgan, 50, an apartment concierge in Ankara. "Turkey has been well run" under the AKP.
But Semahat Unal, a 40-year-old teacher, was not voting for Erdogan. "It's time to put Turkey on the path to democracy. I fear the worst if Erdogan is elected. I do not have confidence in him and his Islamist vision for Turkey."
 - 'Foregone conclusion' -
Opinion polls predict that Erdogan will easily win more than 50 percent of votes to take Ankara's Cankaya presidential palace in the first round, with his main opposition rival Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu lagging far behind.
"There really is no uncertainty about this outcome. It's almost a foregone conclusion that Erdogan will win," said Sinan Ulgen of the Carnegie Centre.
While many secular Turks detest Erdogan, he can still count on a huge base of support from religiously conservative middle-income voters, particularly in central Turkey and poorer districts of Istanbul, who have prospered under his rule.
Some 53 million voters in the country of 76 million were to cast their ballots, with voting opening due to close at 1400 GMT.  
Results are expected to come in rapidly and many suspect Erdogan is already planning a victory speech from the balcony of AKP headquarters in Ankara around midnight.
All alcohol sales are banned until midnight in a bid to minimise the risk of any election-related unrest.
Erdogan ran a lavish three-month campaign that swamped those of his rivals, his face glaring down at pedestrians in Istanbul from gigantic billboards at almost every street corner.
The campaign of Ihsanoglu -- a bookish former head of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) -- has been modest by comparison and Erdogan belittled his main rival as a dreamy academic who will get nothing done.
"It was an unfair, disproportionate campaign," Ihsanoglu, 70, said as he cast his vote in Istanbul, nonetheless predicting that the votes of the "silent masses" would help him to victory.
The third candidate Selahattin Demirtas, 41, from Turkey's Kurdish minority, has shown considerably more dynamism.
But even though his charisma, flashing grin and fondness for white shirts with rolled-up sleeves have earned him the moniker "the Kurdish Obama" in some quarters, he would do well to poll 10 percent of the vote.
- 'Respect the outcome' -
Erdogan endured the toughest year of his rule in 2013 and was shaken by deadly mass protests sparked by plans to build a shopping mall on Gezi Park in Istanbul that grew into a general cry of anger by secular Turks who felt ignored by the AKP.
Later in the year, stunning corruption allegations emerged against the premier and his inner circle, including his son Bilal based on bugged conversations that enthralled the country like a soap opera.
But Erdogan has come out fighting, denying the allegations and blaming a former ally turned rival, the Pennsylvania-based Turkish cleric Fethullah Gulen for launching a plot against him.
He has behaved at rallies as much like a prize fighter as a politician, aiming punches at foes like Gulen and causing a diplomatic scandal by likening Israel's actions in the Gaza Strip to those of the Nazis.
Parliament speaker Cemil Cicek, a close Erdogan ally, warned that all Turks would have to respect the result.
"People will make the right decision. We should all respect this, otherwise, we would be embracing a quasi-democracy," he said.
The future of outgoing president Abdullah Gul, a co-founder of the AKP who appears to have taken his distance from Erdogan, is unclear, with many tipping Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu as a possible choice to be premier.
Source: AFP