For the last 12 years, Turkey’s Islamists led by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan seemed invincible. His Justice and Development Party (AKP) romped from one electoral victory to the other, each time snatching a bigger part of the vote. But with less than a fortnight left to go before the June 7 legislative polls, the AKP is looking fragile for the first time.

Even the combative president is sounding unsure. “There is an apathy among the [political] parties [and] among voters,” he said in a televised interview on A Haber, a pro-government channel. “These elections will hold surprises until the very last minute”.

Recent polls show that the AKP’s share of the vote will slip from the record 49% it received in the 2011 parliamentary elections. Some venture it may not even win enough seats to form a ruling majority. This requires 276 seats in the 550-seat legislature. But as recent elections in Israel and Britain have shown, pollsters can get things badly wrong. Yet, while nobody disputes that the AKP will once again get the highest share of ballots, party insiders privately concede that the glory days are over.

The AKP’s fate hinges on two critical factors. One is some 15% of the electorate, many of them AKP voters, who remain undecided. The other is the Kurds. They are contesting parliamentary elections for the first time under the banner of the Peoples' Democracy Party (HDP) that is reaching out to Kurds and Turks alike. A growing number of pollsters reckon the HDP will clear the minimum 10% of the vote needed to win seats in the parliament — if only by a whisker. Under Turkey’s complex electoral system, known as the “d'Hondt" system, this would thin the AKP’s share by around 30 seats.