Turks vote in key elections

ANKARA (AFP) - Turkish voters turned out in force Sunday for snap elections, pitting the Islamist-rooted ruling party against a mistrustful opposition that suspects it of undermining Muslim Turkey's secular traditions.

Pre-poll surveys predicted that Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan would win a comfortable second mandate in the polls, called amid a crisis between his government and the army-led secular establishment over the separation of state and religion.

Erdogan, 53, rejects charges that his Justice and Development Party (AKP) is not committed to the country's secular order and argues that he has disowned his radical past.

But the issue has polarized Turkey ahead of the vote, in which more than 42 million people are eligible to cast their ballot in what some analysts see as a test for the 83-year-old republic's democracy and the military's political influence.