Turkey’s April 16 popular referendum amending the constitution to establish an executive presidency passed 51.41% to 48.59%. The results were virtually identical to the estimates of Turkey’s two leading polling firms, Gezici and Konda.
Yet several dynamics suggest the referendum will be anything but the climactic showdown that would have given Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan a clear mandate to unify a deeply divided Turkey and prepare the country for his executive presidency. (The amendments do not come into effect until 2019.)
The major problem was that hours before polling stations closed, the Supreme Election Board (YSK), Turkey’s highest electoral authority composed of high court judges, reached a controversial decision. The YSK said that it will count unstamped ballots ‘unless there is … proof that ballots and envelopes are brought from outside.’ The YSK’s seal on ballots and envelopes marks the voting accoutrement as genuine. In past elections, votes would be invalidated if they lacked the proper YSK stamp.
The YSK’s decision stood in contrast with Turkey’s electoral laws and political traditions, inviting a furious backlash from the ‘no’ camp. According to Hurriyet Daily News, Bulent Tezcan, the deputy chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), said, ‘The YSK is paving the way for us to enter an unfortunate period that accepts the principle of elections under judicial manipulation rather than elections under judicial supervision. The decision that the YSK made after the voting began will bring the reliability of the elections into question. The elections will face a serious legitimacy problem. The YSK changed the rules after voting began.’
This post was published at ALMONITOR
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