Turkey’s opposition candidate Kemal Kilicdaroglu is expected to vote within a couple of hours at a primary school in the country’s capital of Ankara, according to Al Jazeera’s Resul Serdar.

Representatives of his Republican People’s Party, CHP are on site preparing the vote cards, Serdar said, where the general population is also coming in to cast their vote.

“[Kilicdaroglu]’s supporters are reasonably confident he’s going to be the next president of Turkey,” said Serdar.

Twitter has announced that access to some content has been restricted in Turkey.

It didn’t elaborate in its announcement on Saturday on what content is affected by these restrictions.

Voting is under way across the country, from the cities of Ankara to Hatay, as people of all ages head to the polls.

Turkey transitioned from a parliamentary to a presidential system in July 2018, a month after Erdogan won the presidential election.

The powers of the president were broadened after a 2017 referendum approving the change to an executive presidency.

The post of prime minister was abolished and the president also became the head of government.

In the new system, voters elect the president directly.

Hundreds of ballot box observers and officials are on duty for Turkey’s elections, Al Jazeera’s Andrew Wilks reported.

They started the day at the polling stations by swearing to uphold the integrity of the vote.

The chairman of the German Bundestag’s foreign affairs committee, Michael Roth, says the elections in Turkey are “probably the last chance” for the opposition to democratically remove President Recep Tayyip Erdogan from power after two decades.

The presidential and parliamentary elections would likely be free, “but by no means fair”, the lawmaker told the German media group RND.

Erdogan and his loyalists were tightening their grip on the media, the electoral commission and the judiciary, he said.

For the first time in his 20 years in office, opinion polls ahead of the vote have indicated that President Erdogan is entering a race trailing behind an opponent.

Opinion surveys gave a slight lead to Kemal Kilicdaroglu, the leader of the pro-secular Republican People’s Party, or CHP, and the joint candidate of a united opposition alliance.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan concluded his election campaign with a communal evening prayer at Hagia Sophia in Istanbul. He recited the first chapter of the holy Quran.

On the other hand, his rival Kemal Kilicdaroglu visited the mausoleum of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, founder of the modern Turkish republic as he told his supporters to “change the country’s destiny”.

Voters in Turkey are heading to the polls for landmark parliamentary and presidential elections that are expected to be tightly contested and could be the biggest challenge Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan faces in his two decades in power.

Polling began at 8am (0500 GMT) and will close at 5pm (1400 GMT).

Media organizations are barred from reporting partial results until an embargo is lifted at 9pm (1800 GMT). There are no exit polls.

• Turks will be electing both a president and parliament for a five-year term.
• To win the presidency in the first round, a candidate must obtain more than 50 percent of ballots cast.
•  If no candidate secures more than half of the votes, a May 28 runoff will be held between the two leading candidates.
• Voters will also select 600 members of parliament. Forecasts and commentaries about the vote are banned until 6pm (13:00 GMT).
• Reports on some aspects of the election are then allowed, but media are only free to report on election results rolling in from across Turkey from 9pm (18:00 GMT).

In a sign of just how much Turkey has changed, the CHP has cast aside its staunchly secular stance and reversed its long-standing opposition to the hijab in recent years, and now promises that the right to wear a headscarf will be protected.

It is part of the party’s effort to broaden its coalition to include large segments of society that are conservative and religious.

“The CHP has gone softer on religious freedom. They wouldn’t dare to back such a ban today. People are more educated and aware of their rights,” Esin, a beauty salon worker who wears the hijab, told Al Jazeera while taking a stroll with her friend in Istanbul’s Karakoy district.

Read more about this here.

Relations between Erdogan and the European Union have become strained in recent years, as the 27-member bloc cooled on the idea of Turkey joining it.

Leading members of NATO, of which Turkey is part, have expressed alarm at Erdogan’s close relations with Russian President Vladimir Putin, as well as concern that Turkey is being used to circumvent sanctions on Moscow over its war in Ukraine.

The vote will not only determine Turkey’s domestic policies, but it could also influence Sweden’s NATO membership.

Find out why here.

Interest rate cuts sparked a currency crisis in late 2021, sending inflation to a 24-year peak of 85.51 percent last year.

According to the Confederation of Turkish Trade Unions, in March, the poverty line – the minimum cost for a family of four to cover food, housing, utilities, transport, health and education – was 31,240 lira ($1,600), a steep rise from 16,052 lira ($822) in March 2022.

Likewise, the hunger line – the bare minimum needed for a family of four to not go hungry – which stood at roughly 5,000 lira ($256) in March 2022, doubled to just below 10,000 lira ($512) a year later.

We look at how a Turkish family of eight manages soaring food costs in the latest instalment of, What’s Your Money Worth?, series.

Women make up 50.7 percent of the electorate in Turkey but they are still underrepresented in parliament.

According to the Inter-Parliamentary Union, women account for half or more of the lawmakers in just five countries. Turkey comes 132nd in the world, with 17.4 percent of the deputies elected in 2018 being women.

“Political parties are completely male-dominated playgrounds,” said Gulseren Onanc, the founder of the SES Equality and Solidarity Association.

“It is very difficult for a woman to make room for herself here … Women have dominated the field of civil opposition in the strongest way, but this hasn’t been reflected in politics for some reason.”

Read more about the barriers Turkish women face when seeking political representation here.

Millions of Turks living abroad wrapped up voting on May 9.

Such voters comprise 3.4 million of Turkey’s 64.1 million registered electorate and tend to support more conservative candidates.

Official turnout on the morning of the last day of overseas voting on Tuesday exceeded 51 percent – a touch higher than in the last general election that Erdogan won in 2018.

Germany accounts for nearly half of Turkey’s diaspora vote.

Kilicdaroglu’s CHP tried to eat into Erdogan’s traditional base of support by organising daily buses to take voters to the Turkish consulate in Berlin.

In July 2018, Turkey transitioned from a parliamentary system to a presidential one. In the new system, voters elect the president directly while the role of prime minister was abolished.

A candidate needs more than half of the presidential vote to win. However, if no one reaches the 50-percent mark, the top two candidates will face off in a run-off vote two weeks later.

Voters will also elect 600 members of the Grand National Assembly, as the Turkish parliament is known, through a system of proportional representation, choosing a party list in their district.

The economy is a key issue heading into Sunday’s elections. Unorthodox interest rate cuts sought by the president sparked a devaluation of the Turkish lira in late 2021 and sent inflation to a 24-year peak of 85.5 percent last year.

Earlier this week, Erdogan announced the government would raise its workers’ salaries by 45 percent.

Turkey has been going through an immense housing crisis amid hyperinflation and an economic downturn.

Kilicdaroglu blames “Erdogan’s capitalism” for the housing crisis, and has promised to ban property sales to foreigners until things improve.

February’s massive earthquakes in southeastern Turkey destroyed or heavily damaged more than 200,000 buildings, pushing many residents to migrate and increasing demand in other cities.

Learn more about Turkey’s housing crisis in this feature by Al Jazeera’s Umut Uras.