A big victory would also represent a new milestone in Mr. Erdogan’s drive to eclipse Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the founder of modern Turkey, in the history books as the country’s pre-eminent figure.

The key variable on Sunday is not the followers of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, founder of the Turkish republic, or the far right nationalists, both trapped in the last century.

Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the founder of modern Turkey, was commissioned by the Caliph of the Muslims and the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire as part of a state operation to initiate the Turkish War of Independence in the northern Turkish city of Samsun, a document from 1919, revealed by leading Turkish historian journalist Murat Bardakçı show