Turkey holds its first simultaneous Presidential and Parliamentary elections today.
This is in line with last year’s constitutional changes that will transform the country’s Parliamentary system to an executive Presidential one.
President Tayyip Erdogan faces his biggest electoral challenge, from former teacher Muharrem Ince, who has revitalised the opposition in less than two months.
Mr Erdogan, 64 called early polls as they were originally set for November 2019.
Fifty-four-old Mr Ince, a former physics teacher from northwest Turkey, is an outspoken lawmaker of the secularist Republican People’s Party. Voting at diplomatic missions outside the country ended on June 19.
The elections are taking place under a state of emergency, in place since July 2016 following a failed deadly coup blamed by the government on the movement of Fethullah Gulen, a US-based self-exiled religious leader.
Source: AIR