VOTERS in Turkey headed to the polls today for landmark parliamentary and presidential elections that are expected to be tightly contested and the biggest challenge Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has faced in his two decades of power.

The outcome will either grant the president a new five-year term in office or set the Nato member state on what his opposition contender calls a more democratic path.

For the first time in his 20 years in office, opinion polls indicate that Mr Erdogan is entering a race trailing an opponent. 

Polls give a slight lead to Kemal Kilicdaroglu, the leader of the pro-secular Republican People’s Party (CHP) and the joint candidate of a united opposition alliance. 

If neither candidate receives more than 50 per cent of the votes, the presidential race will be determined in a run-off on May 28.

More than 64 million people, including 3.4m overseas voters, are eligible to vote in the elections. 

Under Mr Erdogan, freedom of expression and assembly have been restricted and his government has been accused of badly mishandling the economy.

Turkey is also reeling from the effects of a powerful earthquake that caused devastation in 11 southern provinces in February, killing more than 50,000 people in unsafe buildings. 

President Erdogan’s government has been criticised for its delayed and stunted response to the disaster as well as the lax implementation of building codes that exacerbated the misery.

Mr Kilicdaroglu’s six-party Nation Alliance has promised to dismantle an executive presidential system narrowly voted in by a 2017 referendum that Mr Erdogan installed and return the country to a parliamentary democracy. 

It has promised to establish the independence of the judiciary and the crackdown on free speech and dissent under President Erdogan.

The country’s main Kurdish political party, the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), currently Turkey’s second largest opposition grouping that the government has targeted with arrests and lawsuits, announced last month it was supporting Mr Kilicdaroglu in the presidential race.

Voters will also be casting ballots to fill seats in the 600-member parliament.

The opposition would need at least a majority to be able to enact some of the democratic reforms it has promised.