Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his wife Emine Erdogan addresses supporters in Presidential Palace, Ankara, Turkey April 17, 2017. Depo Photos/Press Association. All rights reserved.

The 51.3% win for the ‘yes’ vote means the country in 2019 will transition to a presidential system from a parliamentary democracy that it has lived under since 1945. Unlike the US-style presidential system, the Turkish model won’t have the separation of powers that provide strong checks on the executive. Rather presidency a-la Turka provides the executive with the keys to the state, legislature, and judiciary. The president will be accountable to virtually nobody, the country susceptible to the whims of a single person’s wishes.

These victories fuelled the perception of the AKP as the architects of contemporary Turkey who alone understood what was best for the country.

Turkey has for many years witnessed the steady dismantling of democracy under Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s rule. Consecutive electoral victories since 2002 by Erdoğan’s AKP allowed the party to govern single-handedly with an overwhelming majority in the National Assembly. Over time, these victories fuelled the perception of the AKP as the architects of contemporary Turkey who alone understood what was best for the country. Ruling with a strong majority in parliament for Erdoğan and his AKP comrades was equated with the unrestricted exercise of a power carried out with systemic efficiency.

Indeed, the early years witnessed some democratic gains but after the 2007 victory the trend began to reverse, picking up full speed from 2010 onwards. During these years, the legislative actions indicated a government taking great strides at pulling apart any democratic institutions and practices. Turkey’s already fragile democracy couldn’t withstand the onslaught of their overwhelming majority. Erdoğan’s government became comfortable, at times gloating, in their efforts to muzzle, marginalise and repress their opposition. What little tolerance existed disappeared altogether for any opposition and critics.  

What little tolerance existed disappeared altogether for any opposition and critics.

In the face of the erosion of political and civil rights of their fellow countrymen, freedom of assembly, the press, independence of the judiciary and social harmony withered away, replaced by an extremely polarised and divided society. The public continued to re-elect Erdoğan.

The period of democracy’s cessation was neither brief nor sudden. Rather the coming end of democracy was slow and steady. Developments following the failed coup on the night of July 15, 2016 marked the inevitable termination of democracy, formalised with the slim victory for the ‘yes’ vote in the referendum.

Reversible democracy?

Turkey’s experience flies in the face of assumptions that the path of democratisation is near irreversible, at the least difficult to reverse. The country’s experience is another lesson that in democracy nothing is out of the question if the majority so choose. It demonstrates democracy has no inbuilt mechanism to deny anti-democratic ideals from slipping into its midst. When supported by enough numbers anything can be put into question, interrogated, repealed – even the idea of democracy itself.

The cancellation of democracy indeed remains a perpetual risk, which no democracy can legitimately guard against.  This inherent ability to cancel itself out is democracy’s paradox:  to “sow the seeds of its own destruction” as Mark Chou has stated, die at its own hands, succumbing to the electoral will of the majority.

All is not lost

Yet, all hope for Turkey’s democracy is not lost. The coming end of democracy need not be permanent or assured. As the masses can choose to end democracy, they are as capable of reviving it.

In opposing the presidential system, 49% of the country voted ‘no’. This by no means is a small minority in a country in which around 46 million are reported to have cast their ballots. The difference between the ‘yes’ and ‘no’ vote is around one million, by no means irreversible. Despite utilising the state’s resources to drive his campaign, control over 90% of the country’s media, imprisoning politicians, activists and journalists, and creating an alliance with the Milliyetçi Hareket Partisi (Nationalist Movement Party, MHP), Erdoğan failed to receive a decisive victory, hardly the “strong mandate” he was striving for. The combined vote share of the AKP and the MHP was more than 60% in the 2015 elections, and the April 16 result did not yield a similar result from their union. This 51% signifies a significant drop in both their vote potentials.

Worryingly for Erdoğan, the ‘no’ vote won in Turkey’s largest cities Istanbul, Ankara and Izmir.

A solid belt along the Aegean and Mediterranean regions rejected the proposed executive presidency. Worryingly for Erdoğan, the ‘no’ vote won in Turkey’s largest cities Istanbul, Ankara and Izmir. Together with other major cities of Antalya, Adana and Mersin, where ‘no’ also prevailed, they represent the country’s financial, industrial and touristic heartlands all opposed to Erdoğan’s vision for Turkey. In addition, the majority of the Kurdish majority regions in the south and southeast voted overwhelmingly against the constitutional changes.
 

Peak Erdoğan?

Perhaps, this is an indication that Erdoğan has reached the limits of his electoral power and could have a hard time sustaining his narrow popularity in the lead up to the 2019 presidential and parliamentary elections.

Subsequent developments from the referendum suggest there are credible claims that voter manipulation occurred to hand the narrow victory to the ‘yes’ campaign. The two main opposition parties Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi (Republican Peoples’ Party, CHP) and the Halkların Demokratik Partisi (Peoples’ Democratic Party, HDP) and hundreds of citizens have appealed to the election watchdog for the annulment of a critical referendum that resulted in a narrow win for the government, arguing that unsealed ballot papers and envelopes were counted in open violation of the law.

The European Commission has also urged Turkey to launch “transparent investigations” into alleged voting irregularities in the constitutional referendum. The international observers charged on April 17 that the referendum campaign was conducted on an “unlevel playing field” and that the vote count was “marred by late procedural changes that removed key safeguards.” Turkey’s Supreme Electoral Board (YSK) made a controversial last-minute decision on April 16 to count ballots that had not been stamped by officials. This has brought into serious disrepute the legitimacy of President Erdoğan’s victory domestically and internationally, which will further stimulate the “no” camps.

Indeed, the outcome shows a deeply polarised society. As troubling as this is, the staunch resistance by the opposition groups signifies that the fight for democracy has yet to be concluded. Given that this group did not wilt away in the face of undemocratic and illiberal practices in the lead up to the vote, there is no indication that they will disappear now that the decision has handed him victory. Further slight shifts on the political landscape provide further hope. There are murmurs that experienced and established former politicians from MHP like Meral Akşener, or the AKP, could be getting ready to form another centre-right party in the post-referendum era. Depending on the names involved, a new centre-right party might challenge Erdoğan’s electoral power.

Erdoğan’s likely response will be to… extend his grip over the state to expend all his power to advance his personal vision.

Erdoğan’s likely response, in the short term, will be to press ahead with his victory and extend his grip over the state to expend all his power to advance his personal vision. It will be hard for him both to extinguish the deep tradition and spirit of competitive politics and completely erode the organisational power and support of party’s like the CHP and HDP, that have shown immense resilience.

Erdoğan is experienced enough to know that this slim victory, in spite of his efforts, will not allow him to take steps as freely as he could with a greater margin. Turkey’s parliamentary system has been replaced with a presidential one that is not restricted by any checks and balances, with no quick reversal in sight. Yet, the world’s political history is littered with the many lives and deaths of democracy. Turkey will be no exception. As grim as it might seem at this point, there still beats a pulse of hope. The tussle between the two diametrically opposed camps will create the space and tension to keep political pluralism alive in Turkey, just enough to sustain the flame for democracy.

Tezcan Gumus is a PhD candidate at Deakin University, Australia. His work and research interests lie in contemporary Turkish politics, democratic theory, and political elites and democratisation.

Courtesy: Open Democracy

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Many signs seem to point to a narrow victory for President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in his attempt to establish an executive presidency a la Turca, but the result is not a foregone conclusion.

Should Erdoğan’s suggested reforms be rejected, Turkey’s near future would be defined by its president’s next move. Without a formal shift in constitutional structure, Erdoğan could resort to nefarious means to consolidate his grip on power. Alternatively, given his long-standing ambition to establish what we call a “constitutional Erdoğanistan”, he might simply pause briefly before attempting a second bite at the cherry.
 

Turkey on the brink

Turkey has a strong parliamentary system with a prime minister as its head. The referendum proposes to abolish the role of prime minister and replace it with an executive presidency. A major shift like this is something that has only happened a handful of times since the republic was founded in 1923 according to renowned historian of Turkey, Erik J. Zürcher.

The country’s political system has already undergone significant economic, social, and political changes since the Justice and Development Party (known by its Turkish acronym AKP) came to power in 2002. The AKP was an eager champion of legal reforms relating to Turkey’s EU candidacy and accession starting in 2004. And in September 2010, it successfully shepherded changes aimed at bringing the constitution into compliance with EU standards.

Still, were the Turkish people to vote “yes” on April 16, the changes would be fundamental and irreversible. The referendum proposes 18 amendments that will abolish nearly 70 years of multiparty parliamentary government, moving Turkey away from the core norms of a pluralist, parliamentary state of law by reducing the separation of powers and the checks and balances system, among other changes.

Erdoğan’s aim is to transform the country into a majoritarian authoritarian system centred on one man. What Turks are risking is nothing less than “democide” – the scholarly term for voting to abolish democracy itself.
 

A critical juncture

Since the birth of the Turkish Republic in 1923, Turkey’s parliament, the Grand National Assembly of Turkey, has been the place where national sovereignty resides.

In the early republican period, it was dominated by the party of modern Turkey’s revered founding father, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk (1881-1938). Since the transition from single-party rule to a multiparty democracy in 1946, the parliament has been the crucial institution in the political life of the country.
 

Elected lawmakers have long shared power with strong guardians of institutions such as the military, the judiciary and Turkey’s government bureaucracy – all Kemalist-dominated – in a kind of hybrid political system not unlike that of contemporary Iran, Thailand, Pakistan and Myanmar.

The parliament has also served as the site where governments have been formed, thrown out of office and restricted.

As the scholar of Turkish constitutional development Ergün Özbudun notes, “even at the height of Atatürk’s prestige, the Assembly rejected a proposal to give the President of the Republic the power to dissolve the Assembly”.

Under Erdoğan, the AKP has worked through the parliament to legitimise its rule. By 2010, it had vanquished the last Kemalist bastions within the state thanks to successive landslide electoral victories and a now-defunct strategic alliance with the Gülenists (members of a Muslim-organised educational community who follow the US-based Islamic cleric Fethullah Gülen).

Since then, Turkey has been a weak electoral democracy, with the power of the National Assembly slowly eroding. A “yes” victory in the April 16 referendum could permanently diminish the authority of this venerable institution.
 

An unbalanced campaign

The authoritarian style Erdoğan has in mind for the future was already on display during the referendum campaign itself.

Erdoğan’s tone has been aggressively nationalistic and populist. He compared European countries’ criticism of the campaign with the attempts of the Allies to dismember Turkey at the end of the first world war, for instance. And he promised to reinstate the death penalty after the referendum.

In the first ten days of March, the government allocated television airtime to various parties to promote their positions on the referendum. The president saw 53.5 hours in newscasts, and the governing AKP was granted 83.

Meanwhile, the Republican People’s Party (Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi), the main opposition, which draws its support primarily from Turkey’s secular and Alevi minorities, was allocated 17 hours, while the less influential Nationalist Movement Party (Milliyetçi Hareket Partisi) enjoyed just 14.5 hours. The Peoples’ Democratic Party, (Halkların Demokratik Partisi), a pro-minority party that is advocating a “no” vote, saw only 33 minutes of news coverage.

A March 2017 report from the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe confirms that state officials have leaned heavily on the scales to support the “yes” campaign. By occupying the bully pulpit of the presidency, with all the resources of the government along with privileged access to media at its disposal, the “yes” group has had an overwhelming campaign advantage.
 

A ‘yes’ vote means more Erdoğan

If Erdoğan prevails in the April 16 referendum, the plan is to hold presidential and general elections together in 2019. Were he to win these, Erdoğan would be eligible to serve two additional five-year terms, allowing him to stay in office until 2029. His previous terms in office (2003-2014) would not count toward the two-term limit.

As president, by current law, Erdoğan had to resign from his party and officially assume a politically neutral stance.

But under the new rules, he could rejoin the AKP, which, according to opposition parties, will abolish any chance of impartiality. The proposed amendments also make it harder to remove the president from office.

The proposed changes will grant the president wide-ranging powers to issue binding decrees with the force of law. And even though these will be subject to judicial review, the president himself will appoint most of the judiciary.

With his new presidential powers, Erdoğan would also be enabled to indefinitely extend the current state of emergency that was put in to effect following the failed July 2016 coup against him.
 

A ‘no’ vote

Despite the uneven playing field, surveys show that the referendum race is tight, and Erdoğan could be defeated.

Currently, both the opposition Republican People’s Party and pro-Kurdish People’s Democratic Party are advocating a “no” vote in the referendum. DİSK, a left-wing trade union body, and numerous other NGOs and civil society groups have also come out against the proposed changes.

A narrow loss on April 16 would be a blow to Erdoğan, but it is unlikely to kill his ambition. He is expected to simply regroup and try again, including by renewing the state of emergency that gives him wide-ranging authority to continue bypassing parliament. Such a move would allow for continued purges of those deemed in opposition to the government, including Kurdish groups and Gülenists.
 

This is Erdoğan’s modus operandi: to foment and instrumentalise social crises to centralise power. After the 2013 Gezi park protests against urban development in Istanbul developed into a wider movement against the regime, for example, the government severely clamped down on individual rights, including media freedom. Erdoğan claimed that Gezi protesters and their supporters were a threat to the national will.

The president used a similar argument to banish the Gülen movement, deemed a terrorist organisation since May 2016.

Thus, rather than stabilise the situation, a “no” vote is likely to induce further volatility in Turkey. Erdoğan can be expected to quickly introduce a new package of “constitutional reforms” – a move that would require either a national crisis or a new “enemy of the Turkish people” as a pretext.

Rhetorical attacks on Europe are likely to intensify. Earlier this year, charges of Nazism levelled against Germany, and criticism of interference in campaign rallies by Austria and the Netherlands, were widely cheered in Turkey, giving Erdoğan every incentive to double down on the EU animosity if he loses his referendum.

In a sense, no matter who prevails on April 16, Erdoğan may remain undefeated.

Simon P. Watmough, Postdoctoral research associate, European University Institute and Ahmet Erdi Öztürk, Research Asistant, Université de Strasbourg

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

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