Turkiye goes to the polls in key election

President Tayyip Erdogan seeks to extend his rule for another five years

Turkiye's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan faced his most significant political challenge since taking power 20 years ago as 64 million voters cast their ballots to elect the nation's next president on Sunday.

Kemal Kilicdaroglu, Erdogan's main political rival, vowed to revoke many of the powers the president has held since his successful resistance to a military coup in 2016. The 55-year-old nationalist politician Sinan Ogan was also in the running.

Erdogan, 69, was seeking a third consecutive term as president having comfortably won five elections, including in his role of prime minister from 2003 to 2014, until he ended the position in 2018, when he abolished Turkiye's parliamentary system, centralizing power in the presidency.

An opposition coalition supporting Kilicdaroglu raises the likelihood of his winning, and such an outcome could significantly alter Turkiye's domestic and foreign policies, reported the Deutsche Welle news service.

On the eve of the elections, Kilicdaroglu asked supporters to "change Turkiye's destiny".

Erdogan won the 2018 presidential election with 52.6 percent, but recent polls showed his support at 44-45 percent, with Kilicdaroglu having a slight lead.

Erdogan expressed hope that the outcome of the vote would be beneficial for Turkiye's future.

"My hope to God is that after the counting concludes this evening, the outcome is good for the future of our country, for Turkish democracy," he said.

Confirmed results were expected to start coming in later on Sunday night, though to assure outright victory, the victor needed more than 50 percent of the vote, otherwise it would go to a run-off in two weeks' time.

Both the Senate and the House of Representatives are elected at the same time as the presidential election, with the number of seats each party holds in the 600-member legislative body determined by how many votes it receives.

Kilicdaroglu, 74, is the chairman of the Republican People's Party, or CHP, and he is the unity candidate of the six-party Nation Alliance. The coalition said it seeks to meet the public's demand for democracy and intends to pursue a pro-Western agenda if elected.

Erdogan's Justice and Development party, or AKP, has faced a growing challenge from the opposition parties, including the CHP, the center-right Good party, or IYI, and the pro-Kurdish Peoples' Democratic party, or HDP.

Economists attribute Turkiye's economic woes to Erdogan, citing interest rate policies that caused inflation to skyrocket to 85 percent last year and the Turkish lira to devalue by 80 percent against the US dollar in the past five years, noted The Guardian newspaper.

International relations have been strained since Erdogan's purchase of Russian S-400 missiles and his intervention in Syria, said the Al Jazeera news service.

Twin earthquakes on Feb 6 that left more than 50,000 people dead affected southern provinces, a disaster that has overshadowed the election campaign and become second only to the economy as a key issue, noted the BBC.