Turks voted yesterday on whether to amend the Constitution in a referendum seen as a tussle between a government led by conservative Muslims and its secular opponents for influence over the EU candidate country’s future.
A late opinion poll showed a majority of Turks backing the government’s package, which includes changes that critics say will give the ruling party control over the judiciary. Other polls have shown the result too close to call.
The vote was to test support for Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan, whose Justice and Development Party (AKP) has pushed political and economic reforms since coming to power in 2002, but is accused by the secular establishment of harboring Islamist ambitions.
Turks and investors will eye the outcome for any clue to Erdogan’s chances of forming a single-party government for a third consecutive term after an election due by next July.
Erdogan has said the changes to a charter drafted in the 1980s after a military coup exactly 30 years ago are needed to strengthen democracy and bring Turkey closer to European norms.
“Turkish democracy is at a turning point today — we are sitting an important test,” Erdogan said after voting in Istanbul’s Uskudar district, as police sharpshooters lay in position on rooftops around the school serving as a polling station.
Security forces and Kurdish activists urging a boycott of the vote clashed in parts of the insurgency-ridden southeast and a soldier was killed by a land mine near the town of Siirt.
How Kurds vote could prove important in a tight race. Erdogan said the boycott had little impact except in Hakkari district bordering Iran.
To whip up support, the government has revived memories of the brutal repression that followed the 1980 coup.
“A ‘yes’ has to come out of today’s vote, not only for the democratic future of Turkey, but also to right the wrongs of the past and ease the pain of those who suffered in the 1980 coup,” a soldier at the time of the coup, Sahit Yilmazer, said as he voted in Istanbul.
The secularist opposition does not dispute that some changes are necessary, but says the proposals would also open the way for the AKP to take over the courts after building up a strong power base within the state during eight years in office.
With the military’s once-formidable power clipped by EU-driven reforms, the high courts have become the last redoubt of a conservative secularist establishment.
The package includes 26 articles. Most are seen as progressive and uncontroversial, including one that would make the military more answerable to civilian courts.
However, opponents say proposed changes to the make-up of the Constitutional Court of Turkey and the High Board of Judges and Prosecutors, a state body charged with appointing magistrates, raise concerns over the future independence of the judiciary.
“Turkey is going through a crisis,” Sarenur Beyan, a 43-year-old driving instructor, visibly angry after casting a vote at the same polling station as Erdogan.
“I voted ‘no’ because I can’t support Tayyip Erdogan. He runs the government like his own fiefdom ... How can you say ‘yes’ to that?” Beyan said.
Also See: ANALYSIS : Turkey says losing patience with EU entry foot-dragging
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