Turkish ruling party looks set for big election win

By Paul de Bendern

ANKARA (Reuters) - Turkey's ruling Islamist-rooted AK Party looks on course to win enough votes on Sunday to govern alone again in an election that has divided the country over religion's role in a secular state.

An opinion poll published on Thursday showed them winning 42.6 percent and only two other parties entering parliament -- the main opposition centre-left Republican People's Party with 17.3 percent and the far-right Nationalist Movement Party on 12.5 percent.

"It's clear sailing. Even (Prime Minister Tayyip) Erdogan has gone out on a limb saying he'll resign if his party doesn't return as a single-party government," Semih Idiz, a leading Turkish commentator, told Reuters.

Turkish stocks and bond prices rose and the lira firmed after the survey by the Konda polling agency and two other polls reinforced expectations the AK Party was set for another landslide victory.

Investors like the party's free-market policies but fear too large a majority could reignite tensions with the secularists, including a powerful army suspicious of AK Party intentions.

The armed forces have removed four governments in the past 50 years, including an Islamist government as recently as 1997.

A divided Turkey now faces a choice -- the pro-business centre-right AK Party with a background in political Islam, or its opponents determined to keep decades-old secular principles.

Earlier this year during a crisis over the presidential election the military pledged to intervene in politics if Turkey's secular principles were threatened. A series of mass anti-AK Party rallies also increased tensions.