Erdogan set to win presidential vote of Turkey

Tayyip Erdogan is set to secure his place in history as Turkey's first popularly-elected president Sunday, but his tightening grip on power has polarised the nation, worried Western allies and raised fears of creeping authoritarianism.
Erdogan's core supporters, religious conservatives, see his likely rise to the presidency as the crowning achievement of his drive to reshape Turkey. In a decade as prime minister, he has broken the hold of a secular elite that had dominated since Mustafa Kemal Ataturk founded the modern republic on the ruins of an Ottoman theocracy in 1923.
Opponents see him as a modern-day sultan whose roots in Islamist politics and intolerance of dissent are taking Turkey, a member of the NATO military alliance and European Union candidate, ever further from Ataturk's secular ideals, according to a news agency.