Page 48 - bne magazine March 2017 issue

48 I Southeast Europe bne March 2017
Will referendum be ‘Sultan’
Erdogan’s coronation?
Will Conroy in Prague
Full and frank political debate has not exactly been encouraged in Turkey since the purges of many tens of thousands of citizens began in the wake of last year’s attempted coup. But anyone doubting the significance of the country’s referendum on April 16 on whether to establish an executive presidency with sweeping powers received a rude awakening in January, when MPs engaged in a series of fist fights during parliamentary debates
on whether the constitutional change would turn President Recep Tayyip Erdogan into a “strongman” ruler.
The assembly witnessed its first-ever brawl between female lawmakers, while one female MP handcuffed herself to the Ankara parliament’s rostrum, another had her prosthetic arm knocked off in a scuffle, hair was pulled and several depu- ties, of both sexes, ended up in hospital.
A “yes” vote on April 16 would mean a rather less passionate chamber. Parlia-
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ment would be rendered a mere cer- emonial, advisory body, while the seat of real power would be the 62-year-old president’s 1,100-room palace.
Burak Bekdil – a fellow at the Middle
East Forum think tank, who says he was fired by a leading Turkish newspaper for faithfully describing what is taking place in Turkey – wrote in a January 29 article entitled “Turkey: Erdogan’s Grab for Abso- lute Power” that, “at the moment, Erdogan is effectively the absolute ruler. If he wins the vote, he becomes the absolute ruler”.
But what are the chances of Erdogan losing the popular vote and his chance
at the throne? Not good at all, according to Bekdil. In his article, published by the conservative New York-based Gatestone Institute, Bekdil wrote: “The opposition looks fragmented and helpless in telling the masses that reforms would concen- trate excessive powers in the hands of a leader who has increasingly displayed authoritarian tendencies”.
A year ago, observes Bekdil, it was unimaginable that the nationalist opposition, the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), would drop its pledge of never letting Erdogan become an execu- tive president. But in January that’s exactly what it did, providing Erdogan’s
“The opposition is fragmented and helpless in telling the masses that reforms would concentrate powers in the hands of a leader who has authoritarian tendencies”