On Sunday, Turks voted by a narrow majority of 51.3 to 48.7 per cent to approve a package of constitutional changes. An OSCE observer mission and the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe concluded that the vote fell short of international standards, with the referendum held under a state of emergency, opposition leaders in jail, and President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan making it difficult for opponents to campaign. Opposition parties have demanded a recount.
The Council of Europe’s Venice Commission for Democracy through Law criticised the constitutional reforms as incompatible with democratic norms. They will transform Turkey from a parliamentary democracy to a presidential system. The post of prime minister will be abolished, and the president will gain new powers over the budget and cabinet appointments, with his ability to rule by decree also expanded. Concurrently, parliament’s powers of scrutiny will be reduced. Parliamentary and presidential elections will be held simultaneously every five years, making it likely that both the president and the parliamentary majority will come from the same party. Finally, the changes will reduce the independence of the judiciary: the president and parliament together will appoint all the most senior judges and prosecutors.
The changes will make little immediate difference to Erdoğan’s power: the new system does not enter into force until the next election, which Erdoğan has pledged to hold in 2019. And since the attempted coup in August 2016, Erdoğan used existing emergency powers to sack and imprison political opponents and civil servants. If Erdoğan does win the next presidential election, then his legal powers will match his de facto power. He will be both head of state and of government, and could maintain that position for two more five-year terms, or even for fifteen years if Parliament calls for early elections before the end of his second term.
The vote is a victory for Erdogan and the AKP, yet the result also points to a divided nation, with Turkey’s biggest cities rejecting the reforms. The margin of victory was very narrow, especially given that major political opponents were imprisoned and intimidated, and that the government monopolised media coverage. The narrow margin of victory might weaken Erdoğan’s position within his own party. This could push him to take a more conciliatory stance towards his opponents, and seek to repair relations with Western partners, especially with the EU. But it is likelier that he will act as though he won by a landslide.
The approval of the constitutional changes makes the prospect of Turkey’s accession to the EU recede even further. Many European leaders are already calling into question the future of the accession process. Erdoğan’s actions in the coming months will be crucial; if he re-introduces the death penalty, that would certainly end the accession process. But irrespective of whether the accession process is formally abandoned or maintained on life support, the Turkey-EU relationship is likely to become more transactional, and focus on common strategic interests such as counterterrorism and foreign policy co-operation and the modernisation of the customs union rather than common values and the path to membership.
Luigi Scazzieri is a research fellow at the Centre for European Reform.
