Bill that paves way for executive presidency and could allow him to rule until 2029 will now go to referendum, expected on 16 April
A presidential system is all very well in a country with proper checks and balances like the United States, retort critics, where an independent judiciary has shown itself willing to stand up to Donald Trump and a rigorous free press calls him out on contentious policies.
But in Turkey, where judicial independence has plummeted and which now ranks 151 of 180 countries in the press freedom index of the watchdog Reporters Without Borders, an all-powerful president would spell the death knell of democracy, they say.
Mr Erdogan's opponents already decry his slide to authoritarianism, presiding over the world's biggest jailer of journalists and a country where some 140,000 people have been arrested, dismissed or suspended since the failed coup last year. Granting him virtually unfettered powers, says the main opposition CHP, would "entrench dictatorship".
"The jury is out," says Ahmet Kasim Han, a political scientist from Kadir Has University. "It doesn't look as bad as the opposition paints it and it's definitely not as benevolent as the government depicts it. The real weakness is that in its hurry to pass the reform, the government hasn't really explained the 2,000 laws that would change. So it doesn't look bright, especially with this government's track record."
Polling has been contradictory and Turkish opinion pollsters are notoriously politicised. But all signs point to a very tight race.
With the detail of the constitutional reform impenetrable to many, the referendum has become focused around Mr Erdogan himself: a president who elicits utmost reverence from one side of the country and intense hatred from the other.
The decision as to whether to grant him the powers he's long coveted will determine the political fate of this deeply troubled but hugely important country.
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-38883556
Someone must rig this shit, we don't want Erdogan to continue twisting Europe's arms for decades. And yes, rigging is not unethical in this case, Erdogan has been rigging it even before the failed coup took place, jailing members of the opposition and restricting access to selective youtube videos and websites. Manipulating media outlets and controlling what information the public has access to is considered rigging.
"According to Engelli Web, an independent website that tracks blocked websites in Turkey, over 115,000 websites have been blocked in Turkey, up from 105,958 at the the end of last year. Authorities have also increasingly taken to blocking online anonymization tools that can be used to evade the blocks."
"But Erdogan has brushed off international criticism, and recently announced he has no regard for Europe’s “red line” on press freedom, suggesting there may be even more arrests and repressions this year."
"The escalation in Ankara's war on the media was foreshadowed months before the botched coup, in a March 2016 speech in which President Recep Tayyip Erdogan called to broaden the definition of terrorism, to include not just terrorists but “their supporters”. This terminology has since been subject to overly broad interpretation."
