Turks voted for a new parliament yesterday, faced with a choice between the ruling AK Party's pro-business, religiously conservative policies and nationalist rivals keen to keep Islam out of politics.
Opinion polls show the Islamist-rooted AK Party winning a fresh five-year mandate but strong gains by the nationalist and secularist opposition parties could slash its majority and result in slower economic and political reforms.
"Our democracy will emerge from this election strengthened," Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan told reporters as he and his headscarfed wife Emine cast their ballots in his conservative Uskudar constituency in Istanbul before returning to Ankara.
Many Turks postponed their holidays or returned home early to vote. Voting is compulsory in Turkey and turnout was expected to be very high.
Turkey's electorate numbers stands at nearly 43 million out of a total population of 74 million. Some four million young voters are taking part in a national election for the first time.
"The AK Party has really helped the poor of this country. They distribute food, coal. They give money for our daughters to go to school," said Huseyin Yilmaz, 34, an unemployed man living in a shanty town on the edge of the capital Ankara.
Erdogan, 53, Turkey's most popular politician, called the poll months early after the secular elite, including the powerful army, stopped him appointing a fellow ex-Islamist, Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul, as president.
Secularists say the AK Party wants to undermine Turkey's strict separation of religion and state, and although the ruling party denies this, the warning struck a chord with some voters.
Erdogan, who denies any Islamist agenda, has presided over strong economic growth and falling inflation since his party swept to power in 2002 on the back of a financial crisis.
He has vowed more economic, social and political reforms needed to join the European Union despite skepticism over whether the bloc will ever let Turkey join.
Only two other parties - the center-left but nationalist Republican People's Party (CHP) and far-right Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) - look set to pass the high 10 percent national threshold to enter parliament.
Source: China Daily/agencies
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