Turkish PM says people’s message clear, vote has ended all arguments
ANKARA: Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim said on Monday that the people’s message was clear after a referendum which will hand President Tayyip Erdogan sweeping new powers, and said the vote had ended all arguments.
Election authorities said preliminary results showed 51.4 per cent of voters had backed the biggest overhaul of Turkish politics since the founding of the modern republic in Sunday’s referendum.
Turkey’s foreign ministry denounced election observers’ criticism that the country’s referendum fell below international standards, saying their remarks lacked objectivity and impartiality.
A mission of observers from the 47-member Council of Europe, the continent’s leading human rights body, said the referendum, in which ‘Yes’ votes to grant President Tayyip Erdogan sweeping new powers narrowly won, was an uneven contest.
“Saying the referendum fell below international standards is unacceptable,” the ministry said in a statement, adding that previous ‘politically charged’ comments from OSCE monitors showed the team arrived in Turkey with prejudice and disregarded principles of objectivity and impartiality.
Showing no sign of pulling his punches after the referendum victory, Erdogan sparked new alarm in EU capitals by saying Turkey’s next plebiscite could be on re-introducing the death penalty.
The ‘Yes’ camp won 51.41 per cent in Sunday’s referendum and ‘No’ SANAA: Two years of war may deprive a generation of Yemeni children of an education, the US warned this month, putting them at greater risk of being married off or recruited as child soldiers for a conflict which has killed at least 10,000 people.
Months of unpaid salaries have affected over three-quarters of the impoverished country’s teachers, meaning up to 4.5 million children may not finish the school year, Unicef Representative in Yemen Mertixell Relano told a press conference in the capital Sanaa.
“At the moment we have more than 166,000 teachers in the country that have not received a salary since October last year.
This is more or less 73 per cent of the total number of teachers in the country,” 48.59, according to complete results released by election authorities.
Erdogan returned to Ankara from Istanbul, welcomed by thousands lining the roads as he drove in triumph aboard the presidential bus.
In a brief speech from the airport, Erdogan congratulated cheering supporters for “standing tall” in the face of the “crusader mentality” of the West. Relano said. “Those children that are not in school, they are at risk of being recruited (for military service), or the girls might be at risk of being married earlier,” she added.
The crisis largely began last year when the internationally-recognised government shifted Yemen’s central bank out of Sanaa.
The government says the rebels looted the bank and that it is trying to make all payments despite various obstructions.
Seven months of salaries remain in arrears, public sector employees in northern lands say, making travel to work and paying for basic necessities more difficult.
“Money is the backbone of life,” lamented Hoda al Khoulani, a teacher at a children’s school in Sanaa.
Without it, I don’t think anyone can live and there will be suffering. We’re almost begging.”