ISTANBUL (AFP/Al Jazeera) – Millions of Turks living abroad wrapped up voting on Tuesday, in a tense election that has turned into a referendum on President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s two-decade rule.
Sunday’s presidential and parliamentary ballot will pass judgment on Turkey’s longest-serving leader and the social transformation spearheaded by his party.
The vote is Turkey’s most consequential in generations and the toughest of the 69-year-old’s tectonic career.
Polls show Erdogan locked in a tight battle with secular rival Kemal Kilicdaroglu and his powerful alliance of six parties that span Turkey’s cultural and political divide.
The first votes were cast by Turks who moved from poorer provinces to Western Europe over the decades under job schemes aimed at combating the continent’s labor shortage in the wake of World War II.
Such voters comprise 3.4 million of Turkey’s 64.1 million registered electorate and tend to support more conservative candidates.
Official turnout on the morning of the last day of overseas voting on Tuesday was reported at 51 percent -- a touch lower than in past elections.
The Turkish government is raising its workers’ salaries by 45 percent, Erdogan has said, five days before Turks vote in presidential and parliamentary elections.
Erdogan announced the pay rise on Tuesday at a meeting in Ankara that discussed the economic and social rights of public workers through a framework called the Public Collective Bargaining Agreement Framework Protocol.
“We are increasing wages by 45 percent, including the welfare share,” the president said, according to a statement on the government’s website. “Thus, we are raising the lowest public worker wage to TL15,000 [$768 per month].”
Erdogan added that he would continue to work on raising the wages and pensions of civil servants.
“In July, we have preparations based on the inflation difference and welfare share,” he said.
Turkey’s economy is a key issue heading into Sunday’s elections. Unorthodox interest rate cuts sought by Erdogan sparked a devaluation of the Turkish lira in late 2021 and sent inflation to a 24-year peak of 85.5 percent last year.