Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Premier calls on Turks to accept vote
ANKARA, Turkey — Turkey’s prime minister Tuesday called on the opposition to respect the result of a referendum that will give sweeping new powers to the office of the president, but the main opposition party formally requested to have the vote voided.
Sunday’s vote gave President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s “yes” camp a narrow win for constitutional changes that will abolish the office of the prime minister and convert Turkey’s system of government from a parliamentary to a presidential one.
The referendum took place under a state of emergency that was declared after a failed military coup last summer. Turkey’s parliament agreed Tuesday to extend for another three months the emergency powers allowing the government to rule by decree.
Bulent Tezcan, deputy chairman of the opposition Republican People’s Party, said the party filed a formal request seeking the referendum’s annulment on the basis of voting irregularities. He said the party would use all legal paths to challenge the vote.
“We demand the cancellation of this referendum,” Tezcan said.
The opposition has cited several problems with how the vote was conducted. But it has been particularly angry over an electoral board decision, announced as the polls closed Sunday, to accept ballots that didn’t bear the official stamps used to verify that they are genuine, as required by Turkish law.
Monitors from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, who also listed numerous irregularities, said the board’s move undermined important election safeguards. The assessment drew a harsh rebuke from Erdogan and criticism from Prime Minister Binali Yildirim.
“Efforts to cast a shadow on the result of the vote by spreading rumors of fraud are futile and in vain,” Yildirim said. “The will of the people was freely reflected into the ballot boxes, and this business is over. Everyone and all sections — and the main opposition party in particular — must show respect. It is wrong to speak after the people have spoken.”
Republican People’s Party leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu accused the electoral board of bias and of favoring the governing party.
“It is clear that the High Electoral Board is not receiving its power from the people, the law or the constitution, but rather from a specific center, a specific political authority,” Kilicdaroglu told his party’s lawmakers in Ankara on Tuesday.
The board’s decision to accept ballots without official stamps was like “changing the rules midgame,” he said.
Hundreds of people lined up outside election board offices in Ankara and Istanbul to submit petitions requesting that the board reverse its pronouncement.
In Ankara, Fatma Korur, 46, said she was exercising her constitutional right to object to “illegal” results. Another petitioner, Fusun Cicekoglu, 61, said, “I will not accept my ‘no’ vote be voided, and I will not accept ‘yes’ ballots cast illegally.”
The referendum allows Erdogan, who has ruled Turkey since he became prime minister in 2003 and then president in 2014, to fulfill his long-held ambition for a presidency with executive powers.
The new system takes full effect at the next election, currently set for November 2019. Other changes are to be implemented sooner, including scrapping a requirement that the president not be a member of any political party. This would allow Erdogan to rejoin the governing party that he co-founded, or to lead it.
On Tuesday, Yildirim said Erdogan would be invited to join the party as soon as the official results are declared.
“We will invite our founding chairman to our party, and we will feel a huge elation to see him among us,” he said.
Election monitors from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe were seen entering the High Electoral Board headquarters in Ankara. Tana de Zulueta, head of the observer mission, told reporters that the group had paid a courtesy call and held a “cordial” meeting with electoral board members.
Asked to comment on Erdogan’s rebuke, de Zulueta said: “I don’t have an opinion. We are invited by the Turkish authorities to observe. We share our report, and we completed our mandate.”
U. S. President Donald Trump, meanwhile, ignored the concerns about voting irregularities and congratulated Erdogan on his referendum victory in a phone call Monday.
European governments, on the other hand, warned Erdogan that he risked further alienating Turkey. Officials in Austria, Bulgaria and Brussels called for Turkey’s European Union accession process to be reconsidered as a result of the referendum.
European officials have deplored the concentration of so much power in one person’s hands, and the U.S. State Department cited “observed irregularities” in the conduct of the vote. The result imperils Turkey’s efforts to become a member of the 28-member European Union, a goal it has been working toward for more than 50 years.
EU foreign- policy chief Federica Mogherini said foreign ministers from the bloc, who have a planned meeting in Malta next week, will discuss the outcome of the referendum and the future of Turkey’s relationship with the EU.
“The membership perspective has de facto been buried,” as Erdogan “has told all of us that he considers Europe to be a dilapidated continent,” Austrian Chancellor Christian Kern said in a statement. “This means for us that we’re now entering a new era, that we need a new arrangement of our political relationship with Turkey.”
In another challenge to Turkey’s European partners, Erdogan said a separate referendum might be held on putting an end to its EU candidacy. Previously, he’d promised to “revisit” the European relationship once the referendum was out of the way. The president also touted the possibility of reinstituting the death penalty, which Turkey abolished in 2004 to meet a condition for EU membership.