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Sun, June 12, 2011

Turkey's Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan casts his vote at a polling station in Istanbul June 12, 2011. Turks began voting in an election on Sunday that is expected to return Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan to office for a third consecutive term and could give him a mandate to rewrite the constitution. (REUTERS/Murad Sezer)

Erdogan headed for significant Win as Turks cast Votes

Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan is expected to return to office for a third consecutive term as Turks began voting in an election on Sunday that could give him a mandate to rewrite the constitution and turn Turkey into an Islamist state.

Seen by many in the West as a Muslim democracy and also an European Union-candidate, Turkey has become an economic powerhouse and influential player on the global stage since Erdogan’s AK Party swept to power in 2002, the Jerusalem Post reported on Sunday.

Polling stations in the country of 74 million opened first in the east, including in the restive Kurdish region and Polls were due to open later in the west, including in the capital Ankara and Istanbul, according to the JPost.

Opinion polls have shown Erdogan set to win four more years of single-party rule. The only doubt hanging over Sunday’s vote was about the margin of victory. Erdogan needs more than a simple majority to be certain of pushing through plans for a new constitution to replace one written in 1982 by the Military regime, two years after a military coup.

Erdogan’s AK-party evolved from banned Islamist movements and is more and more openly anti-West and anti-Israel. Erdogan says the new charter will be based on democratic and pluralistic principles that will bring Turkey closer to EU standards. But in reality, a new Islamist oriented constitution will help Erdogan to expand his authoritarian policies and switch to a more presidential system of government, with an eye on becoming president himself in the years ahead.

His critics also point to rampant use of wiretaps by state agencies, the detention of journalists critical of the government, nepotism and a widening gap between rich and poor.

The outcome of Sunday’s vote will determine whether Turkey will become an Islamist state or not.

Opposition Republican People's Party (CHP) chief Kemal Kilicdaroglu casts his vote at a polling station in Ankara June 12, 2011. (REUTERS/Umit Bektas)