Analysts surprised by close vote result
The ramifications, however, are immediate. The “yes” vote in the referendum is a validation of the current leadership style of Erdogan, who has been acting as a de facto head of government since his election in 2014 despite having no constitutional right to wield such power. The office of Turkey’s president was meant to be an impartial role without full executive authority.
The result tightens Erdogan’s grip on the country, which is one of the leading external actors in the Syrian civil war, a major way station along the migration routes to Europe and a crucial Middle Eastern partner of the United States and Russia.
Many analysts were surprised by the close result, saying they had expected Erdogan to achieve a larger majority because he had held the referendum within an atmosphere of fear. Since a failed coup last summer, Turkey has been under a state of emergency, a situation that allowed the government to fire or suspend about 130,000 people suspected of being connected to the failed putsch, and to arrest about 45,000.
The campaign itself was characterized by prolonged intimidation of opposition members, several of whom were shot at or beaten while on the stump by persons unknown.
The opposition questioned the legitimacy of the referendum after the election board made a last-minute decision to increase the burden needed to prove accusations of ballot-box stuffing. At least three instances of alleged voter fraud appeared to be captured on camera.
The new system will, among other changes:
Abolish the post of prime minister and transfer executive power to the president.
Allow the newly empowered president to issue decrees and appoint many judges and officials responsible for scrutinizing the president’s decisions.
Limit the president to two fiveyear terms, but give the option of running for a third term if Parliament truncates the second one by calling for early elections.
Allow the president to order disciplinary inquiries into any of Turkey’s 3.5 million civil servants, according to an analysis by the head of the Turkish Bar Association.
Academics and members of the opposition are concerned that the new system will threaten the separation of powers on which liberal democracies have traditionally depended.
“It represents a remarkable aggrandizement of Erdogan’s personal power and quite possibly a death blow to vital checks and balances in the country,” said professor Howard Eissenstat, a Turkey expert at the Project on Middle East Democracy, a Washington research group. “Judicial independence was already shockingly weak before the referendum; the new system makes that worse.”
Erdogan’s supporters deny that the new system will limit political and judicial oversight. If opposition parties win control of Parliament, they could override the president’s decrees with their own legislation, while also asserting greater control over judicial appointments, supporters of the new constitution contend.
The victorious “yes” camp also argues that a strong, centralized government will make Turkey better able to tackle its many challenges, including a troubled economy, the world’s largest population of Syrian refugees, two terrorism campaigns, a civil war against Kurdish insurgents and the Syrian war across Turkey’s southern border.
The fearful environment in which the referendum campaign was held has led watchdogs to question its fairness. In addition to the vast purges of perceived opposition members, authorities also often prevented “no” campaigners from holding rallies and events.