Turkey's Prime Minister and presidential candidate Tayyip Erdogan greets his supporters during an election rally in Istanbul August 3, 2014. REUTERS/Murad Sezer
ANKARA (Reuters) - Tayyip Erdogan is set to secure his place in history as Turkey's first popularly-elected president on 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.
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