There are just two days to go until Turkey goes to the polls in a referendum that could give sweeping new powers to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.<br /><br /> He wants to replace Turkey’s parliamentary system with an executive presidency.<br /><br /> It would mark the biggest change in Turkey’s political system in the nation’s modern history.<br /><br /> After a close fought race, new opinion polls suggest a narrow majority of those in the country are ready to back him and say ‘yes’ to the constitutional change.<br /><br /> Yet as one pollster explains, undecided voters could hold the key.<br /><br /> “When we put them equally in the ‘Yes’ and ‘No’ camps, we see ‘Yes’ ahead at 51.3 percent,” said Murat Gezici, head of the Gezici Research Agency. <br /><br /> “But as part of our margin of error, if we group the undecided voters with those who choose to abstain, we see the ‘No’ vote leading.”<br /><br /> Just as the campaign has split Turkey down the middle, its divisions have spilled over to the large Turkish diaspora in Europe. More than 1 million expatriate votes have arrived in Ankara, ready to be counted.<br /><br /> 1.3 million referendum votes from abroad arrived in Ankara https://t.co/WJSAXXardR pic.twitter.com/GnbQoFgY4i— Hürriyet Daily News (@HDNER) 13 avril 2017<br /><br /> President Erdogan has accused European leaders of acting like Nazis for banning rallies on security grounds, while his opponents overseas say they have been spied on.<br /><br /> Erdogan and his supporters argue that strengthening the presidency would avert instability associated with coalition governments, at a time when Turkey faces major security threats from Islamist and Kurdish militants.<br /><br /> He told a rally in the northern province of Ordu on Thursday that a ‘yes’ vote in Sunday’s referendum was needed to fight terrorism more efficiently.<br /><br /> Erdoğan asks for ‘Yes’ vote in charter referendum to ‘fight terrorism’ https://t.co/uIthvyypCt pic.twitter.com/ZAeCy4dhpN— Hürriyet Daily News (@HDNER) 13 avril 2017<br /><br /> But Erdogan’s critics fear a further drift into authoritarianism under a leader they regard as bent on eroding modern Turkey’s democracy and secular foundations. <br /><br /> with Reuters<br />
