Erdogan, Kilicdaroglu rally supporters before Turkish election

Incumbent Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his challenger Kemal Kilicdaroglu have rallied their supporters on the final day of campaigning before Sunday’s decisive presidential election run-off.

The two candidates are aiming to attract some 8 million voters who did not go to the polls in the first round.A first round of voting on May 14 showed Erdogan with a lead over the opposition’s Kemal Kilicdaroglu, and Erdogan’s AK Party and its allies secured a parliamentary majority in the initial vote.

Erdogan paid homage to his conservative predecessor with a visit to Istanbul’s Adnan Menderes mausoleum on Saturday, to rally his conservative base.

Menderes was tried and hanged one year after the military staged a coup in 1960 to put Turkey back on a more secular course. Erdogan survived a putsch attempt against his own Islamic-rooted government in 2016.Erdogan told his followers in January that he wanted to continue Menderes’s fight for religious rights and nationalist causes in the officially secular but overwhelmingly Muslim republic of 85 million people.

Erdogan beat Kilicdaroglu by nearly five percentage points in the first round of voting.

But Erdogan’s failure to top the 50-percent threshold set up Turkey’s first run-off on Sunday and underscored the gradual ebbing of his support. Erdogan, who has led the country for 20 years, is still seen as the frontrunner. Recent opinion polls suggest a close race.Al Jazeera’s Resul Serdar, reporting from Ankara, said Erdogan’s message has not changed significantly from the first round of the election.

“He was making a promise to make the next century the century of Turkey. He told voters that he would continue the mega project and enhance the defence industry in the country. He was promising a more powerful and assertive Turkey in the international arena,” he said.

Kilicdaroglu, who is heading up an opposition coalition of conservatives, secular parties and nationalists, ended his campaign with a speech at the “Family Support Insurance Meeting” in the capital, Ankara.