Erdogan bids for sweeping power
‘YES’ VOTE IN REFERENDUM WOULD SECURE CONSOLIDATION OF ONE-MAN RULE
>> ANKARA: Turkish voters will decide today whether to endorse President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s bid to centralise power in his hands in the most radical shakeup since the republic was formed 93 years ago.
Opinion polls this month showed the referendum was too close to predict after two months of campaigning that divided Turks and damaged ties with the European Union, where some states slammed the vote as an affront to democracy.
“Whatever the outcome, there won’t be a respite from the growing authoritarianism” of Mr Erdogan, said Wolfango Piccoli, the London-based co-president of political risk advisory Teneo Intelligence.
It’s been just nine months since Mr Erdogan beat off a military coup. Now, Turkey’s leader of 14 years is on the cusp of a victory that would make him one of the G-20’s most powerful elected heads of state.
Constitutional amendments being considered would give him the authority to appoint ministers and judges at his discretion and call elections at any time.
He’s been setting the stage for this vote since winning the presidency in 2014 and turning what was a largely ceremonial role into a nexus of authority.
In the process, he quashed protests and muzzled critics in the media, undermining civil liberties in the majority-Muslim nation.
Under a state of emergency imposed in the wake of the coup attempt, Mr Erdogan fired more than 100,000 people and jailed 40,000, among them academics, journalists and judges.
In recent years, Mr Erdogan’s clampdown and attempts to meddle in central bank policy have alienated foreign investors, with the lira losing a fifth of its value since the botched coup alone.
Turkey’s once-booming economy has stalled as terror attacks drove away tourists and unemployment climbed to seven-year highs.
Many investors, though, say if he wins a popular mandate to formalise his grip on power, markets will bounce back, at least in the short term.
A rejection of the referendum, on the other hand, could spark a selloff because it will pave the way for Mr Erdogan to seek early elections to try to secure a more sympathetic parliament and push through the executive presidency that way.
The vote positions Mr Erdogan’s political base spanning the country’s vast rural heartland against cosmopolitan antagonists in the Istanbul — a global crossroads for centuries.
“Turkey’s longer term political and economic trajectory is likely to remain negative,” said Anthony Skinner, a director with UK-based forecasting company Verisk Maplecroft.
“The consolidation of one-man rule, the eradication of the few remaining and ineffective checks and balances and increased suppression of dissent will all factor.” The amendments being voted on also:
- tial neutrality, allowing Erdogan to reinstate his affiliation with the ruling Justice and Development (AK) party he co-founded
five-year election cycles, and a third with parliamentary backing
whittled-down panel of 13 top judges, with others chosen by lawmakers
If the “evet”, or “yes”, vote succeeds, Mr Erdogan, who first became prime minister in 2003, could potentially hold the reins until at least 2029.
That’s a decade longer than the rule of Ataturk, the father of the modern secular nation that he has sought to roll back.
While clinching power at home, Mr Erdogan is turning his foreign alliances on their head. He’s sought to repair his relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin — a staunch ally of the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad that Mr Erdogan opposes — while threatening to reconsider ties with the EU, a bloc Turkey had been trying to join for half a century.
When countries such as the Netherlands stopped Turkish ministers from campaigning on their soil last month, Mr Erdogan accused them of Nazi practices, throwing a critical deal on halting the flow of migrants to Europe into jeopardy.
At first, Mr Erdogan’s authoritarian turn was slow as his AKP enjoyed popular support and won three straight parliamentary elections.
Back then, the media had more freedom to criticise the government and the judiciary had greater independence.
But gradually, laws were changed to make it easier for the ruling party to, for instance, make judicial appointments and enrich pro-government businesses with state contracts.
When anti-government protests erupted in mid-2013, Mr Erdogan came down hard.
Within months, he’d quashed a corruption probe targeting his government by purging police and judges he accused of being sympathisers of his former ally Fethullah Gulen, an influential US-based Islamic preacher with millions of followers.
The two had a falling out that year widely seen as a catalyst for a crackdown that’s since made Turkey the world’s largest jailer of journalists, according to Reporters Without Borders.
Mr Erdogan blames Mr Gulen for orchestrating the coup attempt.
The referendum, meanwhile, polarised Turkey’s 58 million eligible voters and left many undecided.
In one campaign tactic, Mr Erdogan tried to sway those on the fence by accusing the “hayir”, or “no”, campaign of backing “terrorists” such as Mr Gulen’s movement and the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which is waging an insurgency in southeast Turkey.