Turkey’s presidential candidates have been holding their last rallies ahead the election on Sunday (August 10).<br /><br />The winning candidate will make history as Turkey’s first popularly elected president. The post was previously elected by parliament.<br /><br />Electoral rules ban the publication of opinion polls in the immediate run-up to the vote.<br /><br />Surveys last month suggested that Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan had a strong lead over the main opposition candidate, academic and diplomat Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu. <br /><br />Selahattin Demirtas, Chairman of the pro-Kurdish Peace and Democracy Party, is also running for president.<br /><br />One of the three candidates must win more than 50 percent of the vote, or a run-off will be held on August 24.<br /><br />In Diyarbakir, one resident said: “I hope that the presidential elections will bring peace to our city and to our country.”<br /><br />University student Zeznep, preparing to cast her vote in Istanbul for the first time, said: “I think that the president who will be chosen must not differentiate between people based on race, religion, language or ethnicity.”<br /><br />Polls will open across Turkey on Sunday (August 10) at 8 a.m. local time.
