Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan vowed to press on with Turkey's bid to join the European Union after voters gave his ruling AK Party a fresh five-year mandate in Sunday's parliamentary election.

"We will continue to work with determination to achieve our European Union goal," Erdogan told thousands of ecstatic supporters at his party's headquarters after unofficial results gave the AK Party some 47 percent of the vote.

"We will continue democratic reforms, economic development will continue," he said.

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Turkey's Islamic-rooted ruling party won the parliamentary elections by a big margin Sunday in a contest that had pitted the government against opponents warning of a threat to secular traditions.

The victory by the Justice and Development Party signaled continuity in economic reforms and in Turkey's efforts to join the European Union. However, the new government was likely to face persistent tension over the role of Islam in society, and questions about how to deal with Kurdish rebel violence.

The ruling party returned to power with a smaller majority than it had won in
2000 elections, but its officials expressed surprise with how well they did in an election called early to defuse a showdown with the military-backed, secular establishment.

Mehmet Ali Sahin, a deputy prime minister, said he had expected the ruling party to win between 305 and 310 seats in the 550-member Parliament, a reduction from the nearly two-thirds majority it had before.

Instead, with more than 96 percent of votes counted, television news channels were projecting the ruling party had won 342 seats. Two secular parties, the Republican People's Party and the Nationalist Action Party, won 112 seats and 70 seats, respectively, the stations said.

Independents backed by a pro-Kurdish party seeking more rights for the ethnic minority won 23 of the remaining 26 seats, the stations said.

Ruling party supporters clapped, danced and waved flags depicting the party symbol, a light bulb, outside the party's office in Istanbul. They chanted the name of Prime Minister Erdogan.

In Ankara, the capital, a jubilant crowd of several hundred whooped as they watched election results on a big TV screen set up outside party headquarters.

"We are very happy, university student Reyhan Aksoy said. God willing, great days await us".

Many people cut short vacations to head home to cast their ballots, and lines at some polling stations were long. In Istanbul, Turkey's biggest city, police stood guard outside schools serving as polling stations.

Turkey has made big strides after the economic and political chaos of past decades, but some feared the vote could deepen divisions in the mostly Muslim nation of 70 million.

Fourteen parties and 700 independent candidates competed for a total of 42.5 million eligible voters. Voting is compulsory in Turkey, though fines for failing to vote are rarely imposed, and 200ul's election would remove the last obstacle to an Islamic takeover of government, and the military - instigator of past coups - threatened to intervene to safeguard secularism.

Voters were divided over whether the ruling party's renewed mandate would embolden it in policy.