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| The referendum on Sunday would expand the powers of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who is pictured on a sign in Turkey. Patrick Kingsley/The New York Times |
ISTANBUL — Turks have begun voting on Sunday on a referendum that would substantially reconfigure the political system and grant sweeping powers to the office of the presidency.
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan hopes Turks at home and abroad will vote “yes” to his demand for the reconfiguration, but his critics fear the vote may add the weight of the constitution to his de facto one-man rule.
If passed, the proposed changes would have a profound impact on a country that is a leading player 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.
The latest polls suggest the vote could be close, despite the government’s prolonged intimidation of “no” campaigners, several of whom have been shot at and beaten while on the stump by persons unknown.
The new system would, among other things:
• Abolish the post of prime minister and transfer executive power to the president.
• Allow the newly empowered president to issue decrees and appoint many of the judges and officials tasked with scrutinizing his decisions.
Members of the opposition are concerned that the new system would threaten the separation of powers on which liberal democracies have traditionally depended.
• Limit the president to two five-year terms, but give the option of running for a third term if Parliament truncated 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.
“It’s a presidential system, but not like in the U.S. — not a democratic presidential system,” Metin Feyzioglu, the head of the Turkish bar association, said in a recent interview with The New York Times.
The Argument for ‘Yes’
Mr. Erdogan’s supporters deny that the proposed system would limit political and judicial oversight. If opposition parties won control of Parliament, they would be able to override the president’s decrees with their own legislation, while also asserting greater control over judicial appointments, the referendum’s supporters contend.
The “yes” camp also argues that a strong, centralized government would make Turkey better able to tackle its many challenges, including a troubled economy, the world’s largest Syrian refugee population, two terrorism campaigns, a civil war against Kurdish insurgents and the Syrian war across Turkey’s southern border.
“Stable governments have been able to handle crises more effectively, implement structural reforms in due time and render the investment climate more favorable by increasing predictability,” Mr. Erdogan’s spokesman, Ibrahim Kalin, wrote in commentary for CNN’s website.
After a failed coup last year, Mr. Erdogan has unleashed a vast purge of thousands of judges, teachers, doctors and other professionals from their jobs, contributing to an atmosphere of fear.
The authorities have also often prevented “no” campaigners from holding rallies and events, while Mr. Erdogan and his allies have frequently implied that their opponents are in alliance with terrorist groups or the alleged leaders of last year’s failed coup.
‘Tense and Fearful’
Hundreds of election observers have been barred from watching the vote, and thousands of Kurds displaced by fighting in southeastern Turkey may not be able to vote because of their lack of an address, according to the Independent Election Monitoring Network, a Turkish watchdog.
“Right now, it’s such a tense and fearful environment that not only are we as a formal network affected, but we fear that participation by the public will also be affected,” said Melike Tokatlioglu, a researcher at the network.
Should Mr. Erdogan win the referendum, some analysts believe, he may initially try to rebuild his relations with the West, which were severely damaged during the referendum campaign as Mr. Erdogan sought to manufacture diplomatic crises in order to energize his base at home.
After Germany and the Netherlands blocked Turkish officials from campaigning in those countries, Mr. Erdogan said that both nations had demonstrated Nazi-like behavior, drawing a rebuke from leaders like Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany.
Ozgur Unluhisarcikli, the director of the Ankara office of the German Marshall Fund, a think tank, said he expected a victorious Mr. Erdogan to lead “a charm offensive towards Europe and the U.S. to gain validation of the new system — and such a charm offensive might include correcting some of the democratic backsliding that we’ve seen in Turkey.”
“On the other hand, if his charm offensive is not reciprocated,” he added, “then he might start initiating a Plan B, which involves tightening his grip on Turkish society.”
What Changes With a ‘No’ Vote?
In the event of a “no” vote, Mr. Erdogan is not likely to let the matter drop.
Most expect him to call for early elections in an attempt to secure his political party a parliamentary supermajority that would allow it to pass the constitutional changes without putting them to a second referendum.
In the current Parliament, his Justice and Development Party, known as the A.K.P., had to rely on the support of another right-wing party, the M.H.P., to secure the right to hold the referendum.
But early elections carry risk for Mr. Erdogan. In the event of a “no” vote, a rebel faction in the M.H.P. hopes to take over the leadership of the party.
Should it be successful, the potential new leadership believes it could eat into Mr. Erdogan’s own right-wing electoral base, stymying his attempts to increase his party’s share of parliamentary seats.
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