ISTANBUL, May 12 (AFP): Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan readied Friday to meet his hardcore supporters in the final countdown to the toughest election challenge of his two-decade rule.
Erdogan has been campaigning round the clock as he nears momentous polls Sunday that put his Islamic style of rule in the only Muslim-majority member of NATO on the line.
Opinion surveys show secular challenger Kemal Kilicdaroglu with a slight advantage and within a whisker of breaking the 50-percent threshold needed to avoid a runoff on May 28.
The opposition was helped by the withdrawal of a third-party candidate Thursday who was hurting Kilicdaroglu's efforts to hand the Turkish leader his first electoral defeat.
Erdogan was uncharacteristically shy about making any prediction about the outcome of Turkey's most consequential election of modern times.
"The ballot box will tell us Sunday," he said in response to a direct question from a TV presenter about whether he will win.
The 69-year-old also conceded that he was having a tough time winning over younger voters who have no memories of the corruption and economic chaos that ravaged Turkey under secular governments in the 1990s.
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