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ANKARA, Turkey Turkish voters gave President Recep Tayyip Erdogan a decisive victory in national elections on Sunday, lengthening his 15-year grip on power and granting him vastly expanded authority over the legislature and judiciary.

The election was the first to be held since Turkish voters narrowly approved a referendum last year to give the president once a largely ceremonial role sweeping executive powers. Mr. Erdogan will also have a pliant Parliament, with his conservative party and its allies having won about 53 percent of the vote in legislative elections on Sunday.

Mr. Erdogan has overseen a crackdown on lawyers, judges, civil servants and journalists under a state of emergency declared after a failed coup two years ago. His critics had portrayed Sundays election as their last chance to prevent Turkey from becoming an authoritarian state.

The victory has potentially grave consequences for cooperation within NATO, security in Iraq and Syria, and control of immigration flows into Europe.

Turkey has continued to cooperate with its Western partners on counterterrorism efforts, but Mr. Erdogan has tested the NATO alliance by drawing closer to President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, buying an advanced Russian missile defense system and planning a Russian-built nuclear reactor in Turkey.

As in other countries where strongmen have gained at the ballot box, many Turkish voters appeared to have accepted Mr. Erdogans argument that powerful centralized authority was essential to forge a strong state and guard against the threat of terrorism.

The results released by the official Anadolu news agency showed Mr. Erdogan with just under 53 percent of the vote, enough to spare him from a runoff against his leading challenger, Muharrem Ince, who won nearly 31 percent.

At 10:30 p.m., Mr. Erdogan, 64, gave a short televised speech to applauding supporters at the gates of Huber Pavilion, one of his residences in Istanbul.

It seems the nation has entrusted me with the duty of the presidency, and to us a very big responsibility in the legislature, Mr. Erdogan said. Turkey has given a lesson of democracy with a turnout of close to 90 percent. I hope that some will not provoke to hide their own failure.

Mr. Erdogan said he would travel to Ankara, the capital, to make his traditional victory speech from the balcony of his party headquarters.

Flag-waving crowds gathered after midnight at the party headquarters, waiting for him to appear. He finally emerged at 3 a.m. Monday.

Mr. Erdogan acknowledged that his own party had taken a hit in the campaign, but said the result was a vindication of his ability to deliver. The winner is the politics of providing services, he said. The winner is the supremacy of the national will. The winner is Turkey, the Turkish nation. The winner is all the aggrieved people in our region, all the oppressed in the world.

Opposition parties initially called his claim of victory premature, but after midnight, Bulent Tezcan, the vice chairman of Mr. Inces party, the Republican Peoples Party, conceded defeat in a brief televised speech.

Our citizens should not be provoked, whatever the result is, he said, urging his supporters to continue their campaign for democracy through peaceful means.

The victory means Mr. Erdogan will almost certainly make good on his desire to become the countrys longest-ruling leader, surpassing Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, who founded the modern Turkish republic out of the ruins of the collapsed Ottoman Empire.

Under the new system brought in by last years referendum, Mr. Erdogan can run for a second term as president and a third, if he were to call an early election opening the possibility that he could stay in office until 2032.

In parliamentary races, Mr. Erdogans party placed first, with more than 42 percent of the vote, the Anadolu agency reported, enough to retain a majority in alliance with the Nationalist Movement Party, which received about 11 percent.

Defenders of Turkeys multiparty democracy did receive some cause for hope: The H.D.P. party, a liberal democratic party that emphasizes minority rights and is led by an imprisoned Kurd, Selahattin Demirtas, surpassed the 10 percent threshold needed to enter Parliament.

The deputy head of the Supreme Election Board said five parties had passed the threshold.

Soner Cagaptay, a scholar and author who has called Mr. Erdogan a new sultan in the vein of the absolute rulers of the Ottoman Empire, said the new Parliament would be the most politically diverse in 35 years, with nearly every major political faction represented.

Support for Mr. Erdogan appeared to be similar to its level in last years constitutional referendum, suggesting that polarization around his simultaneously adored and loathed persona continues to divide Turkey, Mr. Cagaptay said.

Amanda Sloat, an Obama administration official who is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, said that one of the countrys biggest challenges for the foreseeable future remains the deep polarization of Turkish society.

She said Mr. Erdogans reliance on the Nationalist Movement Party for its majority means foreign policy will likely remain influenced by nationalist considerations.

But she said the hard-fought election showed that Turkish democracy was resilient.

The opposition parties ran surprisingly strong, energetic and competitive campaigns, Ms. Sloat said. Parliament will be diverse, with the coalition system ensuring the representation of a wide range of parties including the Kurds.

The victory for Mr. Erdogan and his allies appeared to defy last-minute polls indicating that they were in danger. The final opinion poll conducted by the independent Metropoll suggested that Mr. Erdogan might suffer a double blow, being forced into a second round of voting for the presidency and losing control of Parliament.

The election was seen in large measure as a referendum on Mr. Erdogans rule, with many voters expressing concerns about what they say is his growing authoritarian streak and a struggling economy, which they blame on corruption and mismanagement.

The economy, once a strong point for Mr. Erdogan, has stumbled badly in the last year. Turkey has accumulated significant foreign debt, the Turkish lira has lost 20 percent of its value and direct foreign investment has plunged as investors have been scared off by the presidents increasingly belligerent and anti-Western tone.

The economic turmoil may make Mr. Erdogan more careful about picking fights with the West, but it could also spell growing unrest and political challenges at home against a newly energized and unified opposition.

Bekir Agirdir, founder of the polling firm Konda, predicted that Mr. Erdogan would struggle to rule the country: His constitutional changes in 2017 to create an executive presidency were approved narrowly, 51 percent to 49 percent.

He cannot rule the remaining 49 percent, Mr. Agirdir said in an interview before Sundays election. He suggested that Mr. Erdogan was bound to see a showdown eventually. This is the rehearsal. The real election will be in two to three years time.

Many in the opposition saw the campaign as a final chance to save democracy. We are crossing the last bridge before it falls, said Burcu Akcaru, a founder of the new Good Party. Then we leave the country.

Mr. Erdogan called the election two months ago they had not been expected until November 2019 in hopes of scoring a big win that he maintained would be a turning point for the country, allowing him to create a stronger, more powerful state.

When he came to power 15 years ago, Mr. Erdogan won wide support as a pro-European, moderate Islamist who supported democracy and economic liberalization. But over the years the earlier philosophy was replaced by a more personal and dictatorial rule, particularly after the failed coup in July 2016. Along the way, he either abandoned or alienated many of his allies.

The new presidential system will codify the executive powers Mr. Erdogan has already been exercising under the state of emergency. Under the new system, the office of prime minister, which Mr. Erdogan held from 2003 to 2014, will be abolished. The cabinet will be composed of presidential appointees rather than elected lawmakers. And Parliaments powers are reduced, including oversight of the budget.

Mr. Erdogan has imprisoned many of his critics, including thousands of Kurdish politicians and activists, members of civil society organizations, and Islamists accused of being followers of Fethullah Gulen, the cleric whom Turkish leaders accuse of organizing the coup attempt.

Devlet Bahceli, the leader of the Nationalist Movement Party, whose result on Sunday ensures the alliances parliamentary majority for Mr. Erdogan, said of the opposition: They wanted to demolish us, they couldnt manage; they wanted to ravage us, they failed.

Those who spell disasters hit the consciousness of Turkishness and fell apart, he said.

The elections losers must now figure out how to maintain a voice in an increasingly authoritarian nation.

Mr. Demirtas, the imprisoned Kurdish leader whose left-leaning minority-rights party won 11 percent of the vote, had urged Turks to vote against Mr. Erdogan and his allies, encouraging them to grab an opportunity before entering a dark and obscure tunnel.

What you go through nowadays is only a trailer of the one-man regime. The most frightening part of the movie hasnt even started yet, he warned. Everything will be arranged in accordance with the desire, pleasure and interests of one man. You will feel unable to breathe in a regime of fear and despair; you will feel like you are strangled.

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Erdogans Victory in Turkey Election Expands His Powers ...

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan was proclaimed the winner early Monday of a landmark election that ushers in a government system granting the president sweeping new powers and which critics say will cement what they call a one-man rule.

The presidential vote and a parliamentary election, both held more than a year early, completed NATO-member Turkey's transition from a parliamentary system to a presidential one, a process started with a voter referendum last year.

"The nation has entrusted to me the responsibility of the presidency and the executive duty," Erdogan said in televised remarks from Istanbul after a near-complete count carried by the state-run Anadolu news agency gave him the majority needed to avoid a runoff.

The head of Turkey's Supreme Election Council, Sadi Guven, declared Erdogan the winner early Monday after 97.7 of votes had been counted. The electoral board plans to announce final official results on June 29.

Based on unofficial results, five parties passed the 10 percent support threshold required for parties to enter parliament, Guven said.

"This election's victor is democracy, this election's victory is national will," Erdogan told a cheering crowd outside his party headquarters in Ankara early Monday, adding that Turkey "will look at its future with so much more trust than it did this morning."

Earlier, cheering Erdogan supporters waving Turkish flags gathered outside his official residence in Istanbul, chanting "Here's the president, here's the commander."

"Justice has been served!" said Cihan Yigici, one of those in the crowd.

Thousands of jubilant supporters of the pro-Kurdish Peoples' Democratic Party, or HDP, also spilled into the streets of the predominantly Kurdish southeastern city of Diyarbakir after unofficial results from Anadolu showed the party surpassing the 10 percent threshold and coming in third with 11.5 percent of the parliamentary vote.

The HDP's performance was a success, particularly considering it campaigned with nine of its lawmakers, including its presidential candidate Selahattin Demirtas, and thousands of party members in jail. It says more than 350 of its election workers have been detained since April 28.

Revelers waved HDP flags and blared car horns. One party supporter, Nejdet Erke, said he had been "waiting for this emotion" since the morning.

Erdogan, 64, insisted the expanded powers of the Turkish presidency will bring prosperity and stability to the country, especially after a failed military coup attempt in 2016. A state of emergency imposed after the coup remains in place.

Some 50,000 people have been arrested and 110,000 civil servants have been fired under the emergency, which opposition lawmakers say Erdogan has used to stifle dissent.

The new system of government abolished the office of prime minister and empowers the president to take over an executive branch and form the government. He will appoint ministers, vice presidents and high-level bureaucrats, issue decrees, prepare the budget and decide on security policies.

The Turkish Parliament will legislate and have the right to ratify or reject the budget. With Erdogan remaining at the helm of his party, a loyal parliamentary majority could reduce checks and balances on his power unless the opposition can wield an effective challenge.

Erdogan's apparent win comes at a critical time for Turkey. He recently has led a high-stakes foreign affairs gamble, cozying up to Russian President Vladimir Putin with pledges to install a Russian missile defense system in the NATO-member country.

The president's critics have warned that Erdogan's re-election would cement his already firm grip on power and embolden a leader they accuse of showing increasingly autocratic tendencies.

According to Anadolu, the near-complete results showed Erdogan winning an outright majority of 52.5 percent, far ahead of the 30.7 percent received by his main challenger, the secular Muharrem Ince.

The HDP's imprisoned Demirtas was in third place with 8.3 percent according to Anadolu. Demirtas has been jailed pending trial on terrorism-related charges he has called trumped-up and politically motivated.

But Ince said the results carried on Anadolu were not a true reflection of the official vote count by the country's electoral board. The main opposition party that nominated him for the presidency, the CHP, said it was waiting for the commission's official announcement.

Erdogan also declared victory for the People's Alliance, an electoral coalition between his ruling Justice and Development Party and the small Nationalist Movement Party, saying they had a "parliamentary majority" in the 600-member assembly.

The unofficial results for the parliamentary election showed Erdogan's Justice and Development Party, or AKP, losing its majority, with 293 seats in the 600-seat legislature. However, the small nationalist party the AKP was allied with garnered 49 seats.

"Even though we could not reach out goal in parliament, God willing we will be working to solve that with all our efforts in the People's Alliance," Erdogan said.

The president, who has never lost an election and has been in power since 2003, initially as prime minister, had faced a more robust, united opposition than ever before. Opposition candidates had vowed to return Turkey to a parliamentary democracy with strong checks and balances and have decried what they call Erdogan's "one-man rule."

Erdogan enjoys considerable support in the conservative and pious heartland, having empowered previously disenfranchised groups. From a modest background himself, he presided over an infrastructure boom that modernized Turkey and lifted many out of poverty while also raising Islam's profile, for instance by lifting a ban on Islamic headscarves in schools and public offices.

But critics say he became increasingly autocratic and intolerant of dissent. The election campaign was heavily skewed in his favor, with opposition candidates struggling to get their speeches aired on television in a country where Erdogan directly or indirectly controls most of the media.

Ince, a 54-year-old former physics teacher, was backed by the center-left opposition Republican People's Party, or CHP. He wooed crowds with an unexpectedly engaging campaign, drawing massive numbers at his rallies in Turkey's three main cities of Istanbul, Ankara and Izmir.

More than 59 million Turkish citizens, including 3 million expatriates, were eligible to vote.

Fraser reported from Ankara. Bram Janssen in Istanbul, Sinan Yilmaz in Diyarbakir and Mehmet Guzel in Ankara contributed.

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Erdogan proclaimed winner of landmark Turkish election ...

The Turkish lira climbed on Monday following news of another election victory for Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and a parliamentary majority for an alliance led by his party.

The currency rose 3% against the dollar and the euro, to its highest level in two weeks after the results were confirmed. It has since stabilized.

The chart below shows the downward move of the euro as the lira rose:

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Erdogan secured 52.5% of the votes according to the state-run Anadolu Agency, with only 2% of ballots left to be counted, amounting to a strong enough majority to avoid run-off elections.

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The elections were conducted amidst human rights abuses and what Amnesty International called "a climate of fear." Erdogan's hold on power follows a crackdown against the opposition in Turkey which has seen acedmeics, students, politcians and others dissidents jailed.

One of the presidential candidates, Selahattin Demirta, ran his campaign from prison in Edirne, where he has been detained under charges of terrorism.

But commentators said the assurance of political stability that Erdogan and his majority maintain has at least temporarily attracted investors back to the market.

But the lira is still down 16% against the dollar this year following what has been called a spreading EM debt contagion, and concern remains over long term issues with the country and its currency, which investors may again focus on after the election passes.

"In the past, Turkish assets have responded positively to political events that were perceived as increasing political stability," analysts at Goldman Sachs said in a note before the election.

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"However, President Erdogan's comments on monetary policy during the election campaignadvocating lower interest rates and indicating that he would play a more active role in monetary policyhave raised concerns over the future direction of monetary policy in the event of this outcome," Goldman added.

Erdogan has previously described high interest rates as "the mother and father of all evils." Investors have expressed concern over the views and a leaning to other unorthodox monetary policies.

The Turkish currency has lost nearly 75% of its value against the dollar in the last ten years.

"The recent financial market turmoil means that a sharp slowdown is [in] the cards," Jason Tuvey, senior emerging markets economist at Capital Economics said in a note to clients.

"The risks stemming from the election are more likely to materialize over the longer termin particular, the risk that an Erdogan-AKP government pursues much looser fiscal and monetary policy."

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Market news: Turkish lira jumps on Erdogan victory ...

He paces back and forth on stage, listing his achievements for Turkey: New roads, better hospitals, more public transportation, more airports. At every rally, he hammers home the same message -- he has transformed Turkey into a new modern nation.

In almost every speech, 64-year-old Erdogan disparages what he calls "old Turkey," a place where garbage piled up on the streets, public hospitals were overrun, and roads were dimly-lit, single-lane death traps.

That message of transformation has delivered Erdogan and his Justice and Development Party (AKP) 12 electoral victories over the last 16 years, making Erdogan the Turkish Republic's longest-serving leader since it was founded in 1923.

Erdogan's grandiose rallies have become an expected part of any Turkish election, but they appear to have been eclipsed Wednesday, as main opposition candidate Muharrem Ince drew what looked like the largest crowd in the elections period yet.

In the town of Izmir, hundreds of thousands of Ince supporters in a sea of red Turkish flags stretched for kilometers down a promenade on the Aegean coast, as the charismatic former high school physics teacher promised to end the nepotism of the Erdogan government.

"Erdogan is tired, he has no joy and he is arrogant," he said.

"On the one hand you have a tired man, and on the other you have fresh blood."

Erdogan has consolidated power at every step of his career. He has crushed anti-government protests, and in 2013 he evaded a corruption investigation into his inner circle. After a failed military coup to remove his government from power in 2016, he eliminated his opponents by firing tens of thousands of government workers, gutting public institutions, jailing critical voices, and clamping down on the media. He narrowly won a referendum last year that will change Turkey's parliamentary system to an executive presidency, giving whoever wins Sunday's vote sweeping new powers.

But Erdogan's mantra of development and growth has lost some of its luster recently as Turkish people feel the pinch of a faltering economy.

The lira has lost some 20% of its value since the year began, inflation is at 12% and interest rates are around a painful 18%. Some voters are tiring of what they see as Erdogan's power-grabbing.

"It's a situation where Erdogan can't blame anyone else. It's not like the government is run by someone else so he can turn around and say 'elect me so I can improve the economy.' That's his weak spot and he knows it," said Asli Aydintasbas, a Senior Fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations.

But at the Istanbul rally, diehard Erdogan supporter Gulbahar Turan is sure Erdogan's AKP can continue to deliver. She says foreign intervention -- not government mismanagement -- is what's driving the economic woes.

"These are games by foreign powers, but they should know even a dead Erdogan would get votes," Turan said.

Erdogan's biggest threat

Polls in Turkey are typically partisan and unreliable, but Erdogan appears to be in front. Some polls suggest he will fail to win 50% of the vote, and that will mean a run-off round on July 8. This could be a particularly dangerous position for Erdogan to find himself in, as most opposition parties have vowed to galvanize their supporters to whoever challenges the incumbent leader.

Opposition candidates and parties are trying to steal support from Erdogan on all fronts. Conservative nationalist Meral Aksener threatens him from the center right, while Temel Karamollaoglu from the Islamist Felicity Party could also drive pious conservatives away from the AKP.

But Erdogan's biggest threat is the formidable Ince, who has galvanized the center-left around the CHP.

In the past, the CHP fielded fairly drab candidates. This election is the first in which the party has chosen someone charismatic, Aydintasbas said.

"We are already seeing the results in the sense that this is a race between Muharrem Ince and Erdogan. And that's never happened before. Erdogan had it too easy and he basically ran against himself," Aydintasbas said.

Ince is a not an obscure name in Turkey; the 54-year-old has served as a member of parliament for the last 16 years. He has managed to broaden his party's appeal beyond its usual base of secular upper-middle-class voters to include pious Muslims and Kurds.

"Former leaders of the party were bureaucrats or statesmen," said Behlul Ozkan, a political scientist from Marmara University. "Ince, with his rural family roots, his truck driver father and headscarf-wearing mother and sister is different from his predecessors."

During the holy month of Ramadan, when Ince made appearances with his sister who wears a headscarf, he made clear he would continue to guarantee women's right to wear the Islamic headdress in public spaces, including universities.

The Islamic headscarf was prohibited in public life in the aftermath of a soft coup in 1997. Women who wore it were barred from going to university, practicing medicine and law, and serving as members of parliament, until Erdogan started lifting those restrictions in 2013.

Ince has been reaching out to the Kurds, Turkey's largest ethnic minority, whose vote is usually split between Erdogan's AKP and the pro-Kurdish leftist Peoples' Democracy Party (HDP).

In a rare occurrence for a CHP politician, the turnout at an Ince rally in the predominantly Kurdish city of Diyarbakir was high.

The Kurdish vote is pivotal in the outcome of the parliamentary election. If the HDP crosses a 10% threshold, it will win seats and could deprive the AKP of its parliamentary majority. If it fails to get into parliament, the AKP will sweep up those seats.

'People are sick and tired': Ince

"Erdogan, people are cooking stones instead of food. People are cooking their worries instead of food. Look at the prices of potatoes, of onions. There is no bread!" Ince shouted out over the crowd at a recent campaign rally in the southern city of Antalya.

"Come, let's have a debate. Let's talk about the struggle of getting by, of paying the rent, of sending the kids to school."

In an interview with CNN's Christiane Amanpour, Ince said it was time for change.

"I believe in the power of the street. I believe in our people's wish for change. People are sick and tired. Turkey is sick and tired. Institutions have been taken over. Turkey's democracy has been destroyed. A single man rules over Turkey. Turkey has to find a way out of this," he said.

He is reaching out to Turkey's youth as well. A group of students hanging out at an Istanbul cafe say they don't know much about the old Turkey Erdogan talks about -- to them the old Turkey was the one of several years ago, when there were greater civil liberties. They refuse to give their names, lamenting the loss of freedom of speech.

"I don't want to give you my name because I need to think about my future," said a 22-year-old physiology student. "That is a worry I just don't want to have anymore."

Another student said that providing services and development should be expected from a government, not something for Erdogan to brag about. "Roads, roads, roads. I don't want to talk about that. I want to talk about more," he said.

But development is a message that has worked for Erdogan for 16 years. Back at his rally in Istanbul, as his opera house presentation draws to a close, he asks, "How do you like that?" to the crowd, which roars back with approval.

He calls out to the control room again for his next presentation, new building plans for an island development and then another for a park.

CNN's Isil Sariyuce contributed to this report.

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Erdogan's gamble on snap elections in Turkey could ...

ISTANBUL Turkish voters will vote Sunday in a historic double election for the presidency and parliament.

The vote will be a game changer, putting into full force constitutional changes transforming Turkey's ruling system into an executive presidency. It will either solidify President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's grip on the nation of 81 million people, or restrain his political ambitions.

The elections are taking place 16 months earlier than scheduled, amid a lengthy state of emergency and signs of a declining economy.

Here is a look at the key facts:

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THE VOTERS

More than 59 million Turkish citizens, including some 3 million living abroad, are eligible to vote in the June 24 elections.

Voting will last from 0500 GMT to 1400 GMT across the country in some 181,000 polling stations. Voting in 60 countries for expatriate Turks ended Tuesday but voters can cast their ballots at Turkey's border crossings until the official end of the election.

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PRESIDENTIAL VOTE

Six candidates are running for a five-year presidential term. The leading contender is incumbent Erdogan, a former Istanbul mayor who rose to the helm of national politics when he became prime minister in 2003 and then, in 2014, became the first directly elected president.

A candidate must secure more than 50 percent of the vote for an outright win. If that threshold is not reached, a second round will take place on July 8 between the two leading contenders.

The main challenge to Erdogan comes from a dynamic former physics teacher, Muharrem Ince, who was nominated by the leading opposition party.

Also running is Meral Aksener, a former interior minister.

A pro-Kurdish human rights lawyer, Selahattin Demirtas, is leading his campaign via social media from jail.

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THE EXECUTIVE PRESIDENCY

Constitutional amendments narrowly approved in a contentious referendum last year will take effect with these elections, transforming Turkey's parliamentary governing system into an executive presidency.

Abolishing the position of prime minister, the president will take over the executive branch and form the government, appoint ministers, vice presidents and high-level bureaucrats, issue decrees, prepare the budget and decide on security policies. The president can also dissolve parliament by calling for early elections, but that would also shorten his or her term.

Under the new system, parliament proposes laws, has the power to ratify or reject the president's budget or move for new dual elections.

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THE PARLIAMENTARY VOTE

Turks will also elect 600 lawmakers to parliament, with eight parties and independent candidates competing for five-year terms. The dual elections and the expansion of parliament by 50 seats are part of the changes approved by referendum last year.

Also new in this election is a change to electoral laws permitting parties to form alliances. This means smaller allied parties can bypass the minimum 10 percent threshold required for a single party to enter parliament. Five of the parties are running both individually and as part of two competing alliances.

In the "People Alliance," Erdogan's Justice and Development Party is joined by the Nationalist Movement Party. The small far-right Great Unity Party supports it.

The "Nation Alliance" consists of the secular Republican People's Party, the nascent nationalist Good Party and the small Islamic-leaning Felicity Party. Also supporting the alliance for parliament but not running individually is the small center-right Democrat Party.

The pro-Kurdish liberal Peoples' Democratic Party has been left out of the opposition alliance and will have to pass the threshold alone.

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THE CAMPAIGN

Erdogan's call for early elections caught Turkey off guard and sent the opposition scrambling to compete.

A master campaigner, Erdogan had already been rallying his base for months through state and party events, showcasing completed and planned projects while lambasting his opponents. Mainstream television channels broadcast each speech live as Erdogan's hold on the media tightens further.

Meanwhile, Ince's campaign broadcasts are sometimes cut short to accommodate Erdogan's speeches, while Aksener is rarely aired and Demirtas is incarcerated. They all rely on social media to reach voters.

Unlike recent elections, however, opposition candidates and parties are mounting a serious challenge and voters now have diverse options.

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POTENTIAL FOR CONTROVERSY

The new ballots for parliament with the puzzling alliance and individual party options are bound to create confusion. Though Turkey's electoral board released examples of ballots showing what counts as a vote for an alliance or a party, voters remain uninformed.

Changes to the electoral laws have raised fears of fraud. Civil servants will now head ballot box committees and security forces may be called to polling stations. Citing security reasons, authorities have relocated thousands of polling stations in predominantly Kurdish eastern and southeastern provinces. That will affect some 144,000 voters, forcing them to travel further to cast ballots, some through military checkpoints.

Ballot papers carrying a watermark but not the ballot box committee's official stamp will be considered valid, something that led to allegations of fraud during last year's referendum.

The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe is monitoring the elections with 350 observers.

The vote is taking place under a state of emergency declared in the aftermath of the bloody 2016 coup. Under emergency powers, freedoms of assembly and press have been curtailed.

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A look at dual elections in Turkey testing Erdogan's power ...