Istanbul (AFP) - Turks headed to the polls Sunday for a historic runoff vote that President Recep Tayyip Erdogan entered as the firm favourite to extend two decades of his Islamic-rooted rule to 2028.

The NATO member’s longest-serving leader defied critics and doubters by emerging with a comfortable lead against his secular challenger Kemal Kilicdaroglu in the first round on May 14.

Kilicdaroglu cobbled together a powerful coalition that included Erdogan’s disenchanted former allies along with secular nationalists and religious conservatives.

Opposition supporters viewed it as a do-or-die chance to save Turkey from being turned into an autocracy by a leader whose consolidation of power rivals that of Ottoman sultans.

“I invite all my citizens to cast their ballot in order to get rid of this authoritarian regime and bring true freedom and democracy to this country,” Kilicdaroglu said after casting his ballot in Turkey’s first presidential runoff.

Erdogan’s first-round lead came in the face of one of the world’s worst cost-of-living crises, and with almost every opinion poll predicting his defeat.

The 69-year-old looked tired but at ease as he voted with his wife Emine in a conservative district of Istanbul.

“I ask my citizens to turn out and vote without complacency,” Erdogan said.

Emir Bilgin heeded the Turkish leader’s call.

“I’m going to vote for Erdogan. There’s no one else like him,” the 24-year-old said in a working-class Istanbul neighbourhood where the future president grew up playing street football.

- Opposition gamble -

Kilicdaroglu re-emerged a transformed man after the first round.

The former civil servant’s old message of social unity and democracy gave way to desk-thumping speeches about the need to immediately expel migrants and fight terrorism.

His right-wing turn was targeted at nationalists who emerged as the big winners of the parallel parliamentary elections.

The 74-year-old had always adhered to the firm nationalist principles of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the military commander who formed Turkey and Kilicdaroglu’s secular CHP party.

But these had played a secondary role to his promotion of socially liberal values practised by younger voters and big-city residents.

Analysts question whether Kilicdaroglu’s gamble will work.

His informal alliance with a pro-Kurdish party left him exposed to charges from Erdogan of working with “terrorists”.

The government portrays the Kurdish party as the political wing of outlawed militants.

And Kilicdaroglu’s courtship of Turkey’s hard right was hampered by the endorsement Erdogan received from an ultra-nationalist who finished third two weeks ago.

Erdogan has been lionised by poorer and more rural swathes of Turkey’s fractured society because of his promotion of religious freedoms and modernisation of once-dilapidated cities in the Anatolian heartland.

“It was important for me to keep what was gained over the past 20 years in Turkey,” company director Mehmet Emin Ayaz told AFP before voting for Erdogan in Ankara.

“Turkey isn’t what it was in the old days. There is a new Turkey today,” the 64-year-old said.

- ‘Transactional and tense’ -

The political battles are being watched closely across world capitals because of Turkey’s footprint in Europe and the Middle East.

Erdogan’s warm ties with the West during his first decade in power were followed by a second in which he turned Turkey into NATO’s problem child.

He launched military incursions into Syria that infuriated European powers and put Turkish soldiers on the opposite side of Kurdish forces supported by the United States.

His personal relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin has also survived the Kremlin’s war on Ukraine despite Western sanctions against Moscow.

Turkey’s troubled economy is benefiting from a crucial deferment of payment on Russian energy imports, which helped Erdogan spend lavishly on campaign pledges this year.

Erdogan also delayed Finland’s membership of NATO and is still refusing to let Sweden join the US-led defence bloc.

The Eurasia Group consultancy said Erdogan was likely to continue trying to play world powers off each other should he win.

“Turkey’s relations with the US and the EU will remain transactional and tense,” it said.

- ‘Day of reckoning’ -

Turkey’s unravelling economy will pose the most immediate test for whoever wins the vote.

Erdogan went through a series of central bankers until he found one who started enacting his wish to slash interest rates at all costs in 2021 – flouting conventional economics in the belief that lower rates can cure chronically high inflation.

Turkey’s currency soon entered a freefall and the annual inflation rate touched 85 percent last year.

Erdogan has promised to continue these policies, despite predictions of economic peril from analysts.

Turkey burned through tens of billions of dollars while trying to support the lira from politically sensitive falls ahead of the vote.

Many analysts say Turkey must now hike interest rates or abandon its attempts to support the lira – two solutions that would incur economic pain.

“The day of reckoning for Turkey’s economy and financial markets may now just be around the corner,” analysts at Capital Economics warned.