ISTANBUL: Millions of Turks living abroad wrapped up voting on Tuesday in a tense election in Turkey that has turned into a referendum on President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s two-decade rule.
Sunday’s presidential and parliamentary polls will pass judgment on the country’s longest-serving leader and the social transformation led by his Islamic-rooted party AJK.
The ballot is Turkey’s most consequential in decades and the toughest of the 69-year-old leader’s tectonic career.
Polls show Erdogan faced in a tight battle with secular rival Kemal Kilicdaroglu and his powerful alliance of 6 parties that span Turkey’s political and cultural and political divide.
Turkey elections
The first votes were cast by Turkish citizens who shifted from poorer provinces to Western European countries over the decades under job schemes launched to combat the continent’s labour shortage in the wake of World War Two.
Such voters comprise 3.4 million of the country’s 64.1 million registered electorate and they mainly support more conservative candidates.
Official turnout on the morning of Tuesday’s final day of overseas polling was reported at 51% — a touch lower than in past polls and a possible sign of worry for incumbent President Erdogan.
“I am here because my country is in quite a terrible situation right now,” Berliner Kutay Yilmaz, a Turkish national, said on the first day of polling in Germany late last month.
Yilmaz said that he wanted to return to Turkey one day, which was why he came to cast his vote.
The Turkish national added that he wanted the leader to change.
