Credited with Turkey`s thriving economy, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan`s AKP party was expected to cruise to victory with a minor loss of votes compared to its 47-percent showing in the 2007 elections, according to pollsters.
Some opinion polls have predicted the AKP may hit the 50-percent mark.
The lingering question however was whether the party, in power since 2002, can secure an overwhelming parliamentary majority to press ahead with pledges to rewrite Turkey`s constitution, the legacy of a 1980 coup.
Voting ended at 5:00 pm (1400 GMT) across the country, where more than 50 million people were eligible to vote, out of a a population of some 73 million.
Initial results were expected after a broadcast ban expires at 1800 GMT.
The electoral authorities often lift the ban earlier.
An ecstatic crowd burst into cheers and applause as Erdogan arrived to vote in a school in Istanbul`s Uskudar district, an AKP stronghold.
"Turkey is proud of you," the crowd chanted, as the prime minister shook hands with supporters.
The AKP owes its enduring popularity mostly to economic success and improved public services following years of financial instability that haunted Turkey under shaky coalition governments in the past.
Under the AKP, the economy grew by 8.9 percent in 2010, outpacing global recovery, and per capita income has doubled to $10,079.
Violence marred voting at a polling station in Ankara, where opposition supporters attacked AKP members over an alleged attempt to sneak fake ballots papers into the building, Anatolia news agency reported.
Police fired shots in the air to end the melee and put the AKP members on a bus as enraged opposition supporters pelted the vehicle with stones, Anatolia said, adding that 14 people were detained.
In the mainly Kurdish city of Batman, police detained another 34 people on charges they threatened voters to support nationalist Kurdish candidates.
His economic credits aside, Erdogan -- once the driving force of EU-sought reforms -- has come under fire for autocratic tendencies and growing intolerance of criticism.
With dozens of journalists in jail, the opposition is alarmed also over creeping restrictions on the Internet and an unprecedented outbreak of compromising wiretaps and videos of opposition figures circulating online.
Sex tapes forced 10 top members of the Nationalist Action Party (MHP) to quit the election race, following a similar scandal last year that saw the head of the main opposition Republican People`s Party (CHP) resign.
Led by a popular new chairman, Kemal Kilicdaroglu, the secularist
centre-left CHP has built its election campaign on pledges of democratic reform, arguing the AKP is turning Turkey into a "police state".
"Enough is enough. We are fed up with intimidation. I want a country where I can live without fear," Meryem, a teacher in her 40s, said in Ankara`s upscale district of Cankaya after casting a vote for the CHP.
The CHP, pollsters say, stands a chance to increase its vote from 20 to nearly 30 percent, and help deny the AKP the strong majority it craves.
Erdogan has refused to say what the constitutional overhaul would entail and fanned speculation with his advocacy of a presidential system for Turkey -- presumably with himself at the helm.
The AKP needs at least 330 of the 550 seats to amend the constitution without support from other parties and put it to a referendum.
A two-thirds majority of 367 seats would enable the party to pass the amendments unilaterally.
Despite the sex tapes scandal, the MHP is expected to remain above the 10 percent threshold and enter parliament.
Kurdish-backed candidates running as independents to circumvent the threshold are expected to win up to 30 seats. (*)
Editor: Kunto Wibisono
Copyright © ANTARA 2011
