Part II (of II)  Link to part I www.lelundin.org/guest-contributions/turkeys-referendum-yes-or-no-to-democracy-by-amb-ret-michael-sahlinhere
The constitutional amendments: the substance and the implications, the Venice Commission
 
 
An account of the proposed constitutional amendments to introduce a ”Turkish style” presidential system, replacing the ”obsolete” parliamentary system (as in the official justification for the change), has at the time of writing become facilitated by the recent publication of a report on the subject by the Council of Europe expert body, The Venice Commission of the Council of Europe, an internationally trusted expert opinion cast in contrast to much of the current campaign polemics. The Commission had earlier reported on the Turkish state of emergency, its constitutionality and proportionality, now at issue was the constitutional amendments as such and their deemed effect in terms of democratic freedoms, accountability and the rule of law.
 
Controversially in the heated Turkish referendum campaign and in explicit contradiction of most  official ”Yes”-campaign arguments, the verdict of the Venice Commission – providing authoritative guidelines for ensuing Council of Europe and EU positions – is that the proposed constitutional change to introduce an executive presidential system will indeed mean bringing about clear-cut authoritarianism and one-man rule. So in the dry Venice Commission prose, the nakedness of the emperor is rather mercilessly exposed, in such a way as to be hard to ignore and hard to contradict.
 
Underlining initially the right of every state to choose its own political system, ”be it presidential or parliamentary, or a mixed system” (or, one could add, unitary or federal or confederal), the Commission proceeds to state that this right is not unconditional (under international law): ”The principles of the separation of powers and the rule of law must be respected, and this requires that sufficient checks and balances be inbuilt in the designed political system”. And then the Commission adds, interestingly, that particular caution is called for when a presidential system is chosen, for ”presidentialism carries an intrinsic danger of degenerating into an authoritarian rule”, in short because of the problems of strictly upholding the separation of power between the two popularly elected and hence competing branches, the executive and the legislature – unless these are regulated by rules upheld by an independent judiciary.
 
Stressing that the proposed amendments represent a decisive break in the constitutional history of the Turkish republic, based on parliamentarism (a ”regime change” of sorts), the Commission rules that the proposed constitutional change is ”not based on the logic of separation of powers which is characteristic for democratic presidential systems...Presidential and parliamentary elections would be systematically held together to avoid possible conflicts between the executive and the legislative powers. Their formal separation therefore risks being meaningless in practice and the role of the weaker power, parliament, risks becoming marginal. The political accountability of the President would be limited to elections, which would take place only every five years.”
 
On the basis of these points of departure the Commission then concludes that under the proposed amendments the supremacy of the President is for all practical purposes unlimited and unchecked, specifying in 9 points how and why this is so (powers of minister and high officials appointments, accountability only through a very weak mechanism for impeachment, the entitlement to be/remain party leader and hence controller of a weakened parliament, synchronization of elections, length of mandate duration, entitlement to rule by decree and to dissolve parliament, the post(s) of vice-president as presidential appointee(s) but still carrying full presidential powers in the absence of the elected president, etc.)
 
The Commission then criticizes the way the amendments weaken rather than (as would be essential in a democratic presidential system) strengthen the judiciary, notably through the powers given to the President to appoint key members of the all-influential Council of Judges and Prosecutors – and to control the parliament´s powers of nomination/appointment, thereby indirectly also controlling the other key judicial institution, The Constitutional Court, the Commission concluding on this point that ”The amendments would weaken an already inadequate system of judicial oversight of the executive”.
 
Furthermore strongly criticizing the unclean conditions prevailing during the parliamentary proceedings before the referendum vote in January and for the campaign and the referendum to be held under the ”very substantive limitations of freedom of expression and freedom of assembly” due to the ongoing state of emergency...”in particular the extremely unfavourable environment for journalism and the increasingly impoverished and one-sided public debate that prevail in Turkey” (questioning the ”very possibility of holding a meaningful, inclusive democratic referendum campaign…), the Venice Commission delivers its concluding verdict:
 
”In conclusion, the Venice Commission is of the view that the substance of the proposed constitutional amendments represents a dangerous step backwards in the constitutional democratic tradition of Turkey. The Venice Commission wishes to stress the dangers of degeneration of the proposed system towards an authoritarian and personal regime. In addition, the timing is most unfortunate and is itself a cause of concern: the current state of emergency does not provide for the due democratic setting for a constitutional referendum”.
 
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This harsh verdict on the part of the lead European expert panel on matters of constitutionality, democracy and rule of law obviously stands in sharp contrast to what the architects of the current ”Yes”-campaign in Turkey have to say as justification and legitimization  - e.g. that in the current times of crisis and multi-front war on terror there is a national need for unity of purpose and strong onehandedness, that there is in any case no turning back to conditions conducive to parliamentarism and unstable and short-lived coalition governments, that the change in fact means a higher lever of democracy since everything is controlled by a popularly elected leader representing the ”people” and the ”nation”, that lingering discrepancies between de facto and de jure undermines badly needed national harmony, and that continued dualheadedness erodes government efficiency, to cite a few salient arguments.
 
It can then nonetheless, factually, be concluded that ”Turkish style” presidentialism, as long promoted by incumbent Erdogan and as now nearing a point of no return, means the person of the president presiding at the top of a pyramid with essentially no mechanisms in the system to check, control, restrain or diminish his (or her, theoretically) power, and with vast resources and instruments at the disposal of the incumbent – a product of the sequence of events constituting the political context (as above) and with the expansion of the executive at the expense of other societal branches -  to direct and mastermind the course – and transformation - of the country. The word ”essentially” refers to the way facts on these basic points are contested in ther current campaign, i.e., whether or not there are in the amendments some elements of liberalism and democratic accountability that could, assuming a later strengthening of the political opposition, prove critical in a final assessment.
 
However, a ”Yes”- outcome of the referendum essentially (but not solely) means translating de facto to de jure, which means taking the step from provisional and temporary to permanent, and from illegal to legal/constitutional. This ”regime change” means, for all practical purposes, depriving the country and polity of any (”legal”) means of regime change, or change of government, other than the election opportunity every five years. But it is obvious that with the president allowed to head the dominant party and thus steer nominations, with simultaneous elections at the various levels, with parliament weakened as an institution and the opposition further marginalized and with the media largely government controlled and with vast state propaganda resources in the hands of president and government, winning elections is hardly an insurmountable task.
 
In such a context, the very notion of politics, and certainly opposition politics, takes on a different meaning, especially since the ”Yes”-alternative states that the president (after the presidential elections foreseen for 2019) is entitled to run for at least two 5-year mandate periods. So, quoting Louis XIV, president Erdogan can, truthfully, claim that l´etat, cést moi, with people and politics powerlessly at the mercy of the untouchable (immune), uncontested, yet all-powerful Leader.
 
Obviously, the term ”at the mercy” applies especially to the extent ”street revolution” and military coup d´etat can be analytically excluded, as a result of the process creating today´s political context, as above – and to the extent observations concerning diminishing Western leverage on political developments in today´s Turkey are accepted as valid.
 
By 2029, president Erdogan, now 62 and assuming he remains with good health, will have ruled  (and transformed) Turkey a remarkable 26 years. Whether a future successor as president will inherit these same powers as now tailored for Erdogan – and how this system is supposed to function in the (theoretical) case of another party than that led by the president winning future elections – are only a few out of many uncertainty issues hanging over the April 16 vote.
 
 
Issues and uncertainties before – and after – the referendum
 
 
The remaining weeks of referendum campaign before April 16 can perhaps be described as a duel between, on the one hand, a massive and apparently increasingly nervous, state sponsored ”Yes”-campaign that hopes to mobilize supporters and overwhelm the still doubtful, and, on the other hand, a scattered collection of critics and sceptics, presumably also including those within the ruling party and within the state apparatus – and within the already divided MHP - that now realize with some alarm, or ponder upon, the way a ”Yes”-outcome could affect and harm them personally. The outcome of this ”duel” obviously cannot be predicted, but opinion polls seem to indicate a close call and many still undecided.
 
So one issue of uncertainty pertains to the campaign itself, what consequences it may have and what harm – in terms of irreparable polarization and international estrangement – it may still do. The more, and the longer up to referendum day, the outcome uncertainty, the greater the risk of destructive harm.
 
If the outcome turns out to be (an ”unthinkable”) ”No”, or a very narrow and hence contested and controversial ”Yes”, the big question is what the Plan B of the regime will be, assuming there is one. And here the related issue might be whether team Erdogan would consider cancellation of the vote if  - a big IF - it sees real risk of referendum loss and draws the conclusion that further step-up of campaign massiveness risks falling into the trap of counter-productivity: the same Plan B question. The word ”unthinkable” here would refer both to president Erdogan´s proven skills at demagoguery, persuasion and crisis management and to the tremendous loss of prestige that a referendum loss would have the regime face. At the time of writing, with prognoses still indicating a neck-on-neck, a certain ambivalence on the part of the ”Yes”-regime can be observed; how to combine the need for continued ”No” demonization as the tool of mass mobilization with a perceived need to (also) reach out to urbanites, with emphases on remaining liberal elements in the proposed changes.
 
But regardless, the biggest issue of uncertainty concerns what real alternatives Turkey now has, in terms of viable political system. A ”No”-victory essentially means saying no to the proposed legalization of the current situation de facto, with vast presidential powers, with HDP politicians and some 159 journalists in jail, with an ongoing state of emergency, expanded purge, war on terror and an anti-insurgency war with the PKK, to mention a few defining characteristics, i..e., an extraordinary, highly polarizing, unstable and ”illegal” (i.e., constitutionally murky) situation that is economically and politically untenable. Then what?
 
And in addition serious questions can be asked as to whether the objective preconditions for liberal, representative parliamentary democracy have not already been eroded to such an extent as a result of actions and events in recent years that stable, functioning parliamentarism has become almost unthinkable in the near-term - even (theoretically) if there were no team Erdogan insisting to survive politically and to dominate completely. Democratic-parliamentary ”normalization” would seem to require several (”unthinkable”) steps of ”roll-back” or reconstruction. Short of that, and short of the ”legalization” now proposed after a ”No” outcome, the resulting situation, before new attempts at further power consolidation and legalization can be made, would seem strangely shaky.
 
Also, it cannot in this analytical context be ignored that in recent years there has taken place a process, at least in part Erdogan/AKP-sponsored, of  (competitive) Islamist transformation of the Turkish society which has served to undermine adherence to the principle of (Western-style) secularism and to impact parties and parliament, and other structures. So issues of real, achievable alternatives, what ”normal” that can be returned to or arrived at,  are not easy. They tend to indicate years of bumpy road.
 
But assuming a ”Yes”-victory on D-Day, how is team Erdogan planning to administer the interim period between then and the ”legalizing” elections in 2019 when the Turkish people will have the final  (or a second) chance to accept or not accept the regime change such as now at issue? Will he/they simply start implementing (de facto) the changes immediately, using the interim period for the necessary technical and administrative adjustments and interpreting the vote result as a popular mandate for an immediate transfer, for instance moving out the prime minister and starting to replace member of the HSYK and the Constitutional Court? And will he/they simply continue with the state of emergency until the ”permanent” state of emergency is established? And what about the role, powers and responsibilities of the parliament during the interim period? Will a ”Yes”-victorious (team) Erdogan feel safe enough, and internationally tarnished enough, to start projecting signals of restored ”normalcy”, e.g., by halting the purge and/or freeing jailed journalists and/or jailed parliamentarians. Or even by launching some new initiative for a ”resolution process” on the Kurdish issue?
 
 
Policy implications – and policy dilemmas
 
 
With Turkey´s strategic importance remaining at least as great as ever before for both the US (over Syria, Iraq and Russia, among other things) and the EU (over migration, terror, economy, among other things)  but with the strains that have built up in both directions as a result of the turmoil in Turkey in recent years, both the US and the EU are faced with an intricate dilemma concerning how to relate to Turkey and its leadership in its time of drama and crisis. Concerning the US, now Trump-led, the balancing act and dilemmas pertain chiefly to the names of Incirlik, Pennsylvania and Raqqa: The need for the use of the Incirlik base in the air campaign against ISIL versus Ankara demands for the US to extradite Fethullah Gulen (accused by Turkey to have masterminded the coup attempt in July last year) versus the US`perceived need for Kurdish (YPG/PYD) boots on the ground in an offensive against ISIL in Raqqa versus Ankara´s demand for the US (and Russia) to halt any military cooperation with the Syrian-Kurdish YPG/PYD because of its relationship and cooperation with the PKK in Turkey. Another ingredient concerns issues of competition or cooperation with Moscow, the Washington-Ankara-Moscow triangle.
 
For NATO, there is in addition the broader issues both pertaining to the Black Sea dynamics (where Turkey under the antiquated Montreux Declaration of 1936 guards the passage through the Bosporus and Dardanelles Straits) and NATO´s South-Eastern flank and concerning the fundamentals of what commitments and values constitute criteria of membership, in times when NATO enlargement and NATO membership (and NATO responsibilities) stand out as particularly contested and sensitive. The balance of strategic interdependence between Turkey and the Alliance has clearly been affected, if not shaken, in recent years, culminating with the recent un-heard-of quarrel between Ankara and select fellow NATO member states.
 
For the EU the main thing now concerns how to balance the need to preserve the migration deal of last year with the pressing question of how to relate to Turkey, nominally a candidate country for full membership and a country of great strategic importance, as Turkey is manifestly sliding into becoming a full-fledged authoritarian and rhetorically anti-European and anti-Western country, a grave concern also for the millions of Turks living in European countries. The war of words between Erdogan and his ministers and European leaders in recent days and weeks has been unprecedented, not least between NATO-allies, at the time of writing making (or provoking) the president to defiantly speak of re-introducing the death penalty and to reconsider his/Turkey´s whole relationship with the EU, even repeating earlier hints to bring the EU membership question to yet another referendum.
 
Current problems in the EU-Turkey relations date back to the time, late in the 10s, when momentum in the earlier membership talks started to slip and to grind to a more frosty halt, with Turkey expressing doubts at the EU´s sincerity and voicing complaints over the EU´s unwillingness or inability to help find a just solution to the Cyprus question, and with the EU and individual EU governments perceiving of a diminishing Turkish regime inclination to credibly pursue the reform path, seeing an increasingly illiberal Turkish regime losing interest in liberal reforms, while gradually consolidating power.
 
And since then, from the point of view of EU founding core values, developments in Turkey had seemed to accelerate in the wrong direction, as if the ongoing power struggle and the process of Erdogan/AKP power consolidation occurred systematically at the cost of gradual estrangement. The Gezi Park events of 2013, the corruption events and stormy elections in 2014, the two turbulent elections in combination with the ISIL and PKK wars in 2015, and then the chain of events of 2016 – the fratricidal enmity between the two rival Sunni movements, the mysterious coup d´etat attempt, the terror attacks, the unprecedented purge under state of emergency, and throughout this process the rise of Erdogan to absolute power de facto -  all this making EU-Turkey relations increasingly problematic.
 
And now the grande finale, the referendum, with a campaign  taking place under continued state of emergency (as pointed out by the Venice Commission and as will unavoidably by pointed out by the ODIHR monitors) , a referendum which with a ”Yes”-outcome will make permanent (or almost) a state of affairs in Turkey which will be completely EU-incompatible, a Turkey run and controlled long-term by a person who has committed to teaching the EU a lesson rather than to express readiness to listen with respect to EU advice, regardless of all still valid points of economic and political interdependence.
 
So the EU, and EU governments, are indeed facing a serious dilemma. Any attempt to speak up in explicit criticism concerning the door that is about to be closed risks not only to be defiantly ignored but also abused in the heat of the campaign, stamped by the regime (”Yes”) side as unacceptable interference on behalf of the ”naysaying” opposition and helping enhance the climate of siege – and thus increasing the probability of a ”Yes”-outcome – a classical case of counter-productivity risk. And preservation of the migration deal does remain a core EU interest, regardless. This would, in sum, advice a guarded, non-confrontational wait-and-see EU position, regardless of EU core values which would normally have the EU proclaim that a key constitutional referendum cannot legitimately be held under conditions of state of emergency and extremely uneven terms of contest.
 
But the other horn of the dilemma is precisely the issue of core values and credibility, combined perhaps with  a realization of there nowadays being very limited EU influence or leverage over events in Turkey and also. currently, very limited risks that Ankara would at the end of the day be ready, able and interested to make good (or bad) on its threats to cancel the migration deal. Not speaking up while there is, theoretically, still time on what is at stake would in retrospect present the EU as the party that acquiesced, that sacrificed being on the ”right” side of history on the altar of fearful pragmatism.
 
And liberals and secularists and others in Turkey, the ”naysayers”, are struggling with their own ambivalence and dilemmas, learning the hard way that essential support from the democratic/Western world presumably seriously threaten to reinforce the ”Yes”-campaign, a kiss of death of sorts. It would be sad and ominous for the future of the country if (again a big ”if”) democratic opposition would, for want of hope and for a perceived lack of options, react to the climate of polarization and to a ”Yes” outcome by seeking to leave for abroad, in apathy and en masse.
 
So April 16 will indeed be a critical day, but the future is uncertain, regardless.
 
Michael Sahlin
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Briefly about the author: Dr. Sahlin is a former Swedish Ambassador to Turkey and a prominent contributor to the assessment of current developments in Turkey and beyond. 

Part I (of II) 
Still, at the time of writing, weeks ahead of the critically important sea-change referendum in Turkey for or against the proposed amendments to the Turkish Constitution – introducing a ”Turkish style” presidential system to replace the Republican Turkish tradition of parliamentarism – waves of speculation run high as to the probable referendum outcome, as to whether there is still a possibility for the referendum to be last-minute cancelled, as to the various consequence scenarios (in case of ”Yes” versus ”No” outcomes respectively), and as to what the effect of current regime change issues will or might be on Turkey-EU and Turkey-US/NATO relations. The stakes are potentially tremendous, as indicated by the current acrimoniousness over Turkish governmental campaigning in exposed EU countries.
 
It helps understanding the stakes and the implications to first reiterate the broader political context (domestic and external) in which the referendum campaign takes place, then to look into the facts of what the constitutional amendments seek to achieve, how they are officially justified and how they are analyzed by constitutional experts, and then to look into the various policy choices and implications, for Turkey and (among others) the EU respectively.
 
 
The political context
 
 
The ingredients of the political context of the current referendum campaign can best – or only – be identified through a summary of relevant events leading to and shaping the present. Since the crucial referendum now under fierce campaign essentially concerns for or against ”legalization” of president Recep Tayyip Erdogan´s vast and uncontested power, the history of the context largely is the history of his rise to a position of power at least equalling that of Ataturk, in those days.
 
So if the history of the present situation were to be briefly summarized one select point of departure could be the ”Refahyol” (Erbakan-Ciller) government episode and the so-called ”Post-Modern coup” in the 1996-97 period, i.e., the sequence of events when the then ruling Kemalist establishment felt it necessary to oust by force (although not by full-fledged military take-over, hence ”post-modern”) a first experiment with an Islamist government. The tumultuous circumstances preceding (especially the ”dirty war” between security forces and the PKK) and following upon these events, with excesses in unstable and unproductive coalition governments and then a deep financial crisis, led to the creation of a reformed Refah Party, now called AKP and now under the leadership of the former Erbakan disciple, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the AKP rising from the ashes of the failing 90`s as the new political dominant in a land-slide parliamentary victory in 2002.
 
Then followed the first 10 years of AKP rule, with conspicuous economic successes, with gradual steps of power consolidation, with a continued struggle with resistance from the still-powerful secularist-kemalist establishment – essentially in strategic co-operation with the rival Gulenist movement and with EU approchement as the main vehicle of political reform (and power consolidation). One step in this process and this struggle was the referendum decision in 2007 to have the post of president elected in direct popular elections. Another step included the ”Ergenokon” and ”Bayloz” trials against hundreds of highranking officers and others under suspicions (fabricated by Gulenists, as later revealed) of anti-regime plotting. Further gains and further power consolidation were then achieved in the 2011 parliamentary elections when
Erdogan´s AKP won nearly 50% and thus steadied a comfortable majority in the parliament. By then prime minister Erdogan had become the undisputed leader of a party that controlled the parliament – even though not mastering the 330 seats (3/5 of the 550 total) required for taking a constitutional change to a decisive referendum) – and with a tightening grip on the state apparatus. Turkey was portrayed domestically and internationally as a or the model country, a living proof that moderate islamism and liberal, secular, representative democracy can indeed be combined.
 
 But already then there were voices warning about authoritarian tendencies in Turkey´s governance, and already then ties between Turkey and the EU had decelerated considerably, and worryingly.
 
Then, as from 2011 and the AKP hovering at its peak, started a slippery slope, part as a result of the chain of events starting with the Arab Spring and the catastrophic effect of the Arab Spring on developments in neighboring Syria (and, related) Iraq, part as a result growing competition-turned-enmity between the former anti-kemalist allies, AKP/Erdogan versus the Gulenist movement.  And in the midst of these emerging developments, there was the Gezi Park summer of 2013, with events spiralling from an early stage as a green youth protest in Istanbul to a nation-wide pro-democracy (anti-Erdogan) protest movement, subsequently crushed by internationally shocking police force. Only months later came the dramatic corruption indictment, responded to by team Erdogan (only months before the local elections in March 2014) through a declaration of war (of sorts) against branches of police and judiciary stamped as ”the gulenist parallel state” seeking to perpetrate a coup d´etat (of sorts), leading to the March municipal election assuming the character of a for-or-against-Erdogan referendum – in which Erdogan prevailed.
 
Next at issue was the upcoming direct presidential election, August 2014, the first of its kind after the controversial constitutional change. For Erdogan, having ”survived” the March election (post-corruption crisis) test, and being preoccupied with purging the Gulenist adversaries and by the threatening developments in Syria and Iraq after the emergence of the Islamic State challenge, the question was whether to seek to continue as PM in spite of the AKP rule of maximum 3 parliamentary terms, or to instead register candidacy for the first popularly elected presidency. Having opted for the latter, and relatively easily outmanoeuvring the joint opposition (CHP/MHP) candidate, winning by 52% in a summer vote with low turnout, he could then move into the newly erected mega palace, Aksaray, as the new president with clearly stated ambitions to be an active head of the executive and pledging to seek formalization of this by constitutional change – an aim later codified as priority one by an obedient AKP in its May 2016 congress.
 
But well before that, there was the Kobane drama in northernmost Syria, autumn 2014, preceded inside Turkey by a period of ”resolution process” on the Kurdish question between Ankara and various players within the Kurdish movement, And preceding Kobane, in the presidential election in Turkey, the co-chair of the HDP, Selahattin Demirtas, had gained a surprising near 10% - later encouraging the HDP to risk participating in the June 7 2015 parliamentary elections as a party (in view of the draconian 10% threshold and the risk of losing it all, benefiting the AKP, if the threshold could not be reached). HDP/Demirtas confidence and the Kobane drama had a significant impact on events to follow.
 
Kobane was a game changer in several ways. It gained Syrian-Kurdish PYD/YPG international moral recognition, the Kurdish forces succeeding with US help to resist IS siege and aggression, it convinced the US to re-enter militarily into a region president Obama had pledged never to re-enter, it led to a game-changing process of US-Syrian Kurdish military cooperation, in going after IS, and it led to upheaval in south-eastern Turkey and to the end of the Ankara-PKK ”resolution process”.
 
The next – potential - game changer was the June 2015 parliamentary election. In the political process preceding June 7 it was gradually becoming clear that developments in Syria had started to make Turkey´s Davutoglu-orchestrated anti-Assad (and anti-PYD/YPG) Syria policy increasingly untenable, that this and other trends made team Erdogan feel vulnerable to risks of diminishing popularity, that the ”resolution process” on the Kurdish question was going down the drain and that the HDP was definitely not going to be interested in a trade-off with Erdogan and his AKP, increased Kurdish rights in exchange for Kurdish/HDP support for Erdogan´s desired presidential system plans. Additionally that the HDP was gaining ground in political polls, over and above what Kurdish representatives would normally receive, the HDP being seen by many liberals and leftists as the best or only chance to stop the AKP from continued supremacy and Erdogan from unlimited power. Additionally further, that in team Erdogan´s pre-election assessments the risk of jeopardizing Turkish nationalist votes had started to weigh heavier than hopes for a prestigious ”resolution process” success. And meanwhile the costs for maintaining the process tended to rise, on the south-eastern ground.
 
The outcome of the June 7 elections seemed at the time to be a real game changer, with the AKP losing its own majority and consequently having – first time since the beginning in 2002 – to venture into the art of power sharing, and with the HDP gaining some 13% and a significant proportion of parliamentary seats, 80, equalling the Turkish-nationalist MHP, whose leader, Bahceli, soon stated that co-governing with the Kurdish-nationalist HDP was unthinkable, thus making clear that a joint opposition (non-AKP) government was unattainable, leaving a coalition government with the AKP dominant part as the only option. Futile coalition negotiations that summer seemed to confirm that coalition terms between the AKP and any and all opposition parties were a priori non-starters. And by the time, late that summer, president Erdogan declared that all coalition negotiations had failed and that therefore re-election had become a necessity, the general impression was that Erdogan/AKP interest in coalition power sharing had been null and void all along. That impression had been fostered not least by other developments that same turbulent summer.
 
These developments, causing and fuelling a crisis atmosphere in the country, were about the PKK and about IS, the Islamic State (or ISIL, ISIS or Daesh), and president Erdogan´s decision weeks after the fateful June elections to both re-open large-scale anti-insurgency warfare with the PKK and to agree with the US (after lengthy negotiations) for Turkey to enter into partnership with the anti-Daesh coalition and, among other steps, to open the Incirlic base for coalition warfare against the IS/Daesh in Syria. So from then on, Turkey was involved in two separate, cross-boundary anti-terror campaigns, as it re-entered into a new electoral campaign, now with November 1 as the target date. Simultaneously with these developments, the refugee crisis started to hit Turkey, and, via Turkey and the Aegean, the EU. In the resulting atmosphere of crisis, the Turkish electorate (expectedly, one could say in retrospect, although pollsters generally missed it) chose to ”play safe” and saw to it that Erdogan and his AKP regained its majority with nearly 50% of the votes, with the HDP and the MHP only narrowly surviving the 10% threshold, in the case of the HDP in spite (or because) of an intense governmental intimidation campaign.
 
In parallel with these domestic developments, the foreign policy area went ”from bad to worse”. Turkey´s policy options having been further complicated and diminished by the Ryssian decision in late September to enter militarily into the Syrian scene in explicit support of Turkey´s main foe, the Assad regime, the shoot-down incident on November 24 created an open crisis between Russia and Turkey, with a string of punitive Russian actions further hurting the Turkish economy and reducing its manoeuvring space in the Middle East, later forcing Ankara to admit diplomatic defeat and need for strategic retreat – seeking ”more friends and fewer enemies”, as later explained.
 
Then came the even more dramatic year 2016, with a string of terror attacks of mixed PKK and IS perpetrator origins, the year culminating with the spectacular assassination of the Russian ambassador and the new-year Reina night club massacre, with the foiled July 15 coup d´etat and with the ensuing acceleration of opposition purge, state of emergency and rule by decree – and with the strategic AKP-MHP agreement to set in motion a process towards referendum and presidential system.
 
One ingredient in the 2016 drama was the further stepped-up campaign against the Gulenists, officially classifying them as a terror organization (”FETÖ”) - leaving Ankara now with 3 terror targets, PKK, IS and ”FETÖ”, another was the AKP congress decision in May to change prime ministers (Davutoglu bowing out and Yilderim bowing in), to seek normalization with Russia and Israel in a foreign policy adjustment primarily to pressing Syrian realities, and to prioritize the transfer to a presidential system.
 
But before that, the strategic EU-Turkey migration agreement happened, March 18, with Turkey pledging to stop further migration waves across the Aegean, to integrate migrants in Turkey and to receive returnees from Greece, in exchange for the EU pledging to financially support refugee integration in Turkey, to receive from Turkey refugees corresponding to returnee numbers, to upgrade EU-Turkey membership talks and to consider visa liberalization for Turks to Schengen countries, under certain conditions. This was a Davutoglu-Merkel negotiated pragmatic deal that was to prove as difficult to implement fully as it was controversial on both sides. Paradoxically it can be said one year later that the deal proved as effective in actually stopping most of the Aegean crossings as it was ineffective in promoting the overall EU-Turkey relationship, suffering from other strains and relationship vulnerabilities.
 
So the July 15 failed coup came as a manifestation, albeit a surprise manifestation to most, of these various ingredients and conflicts. Still with many questions unanswered as to who, what, when and why, the fact of the coup being resisted and (therefore) violent and (therefore) failed presented president, party and government with a golden opportunity (”A gift from God”, as Erdogan was quoted as admitting), to dramatically further consolidate its power and to stampede plot suspects specifically and – gradually – regime opponents generally. So accompanied by the string of terrorist attacks, the second half of 2016 witnessed an unprecedented purge of targeted people from all walks of life, with the gradually extended state of emergency providing the legal justification and the foiled coup and its victims providing the pumped-up revolutionary tool of supporter mobilization, and polarization.
 
Meanwhile, the EU was a bit stuck in the dilemma of how to navigate between the Erdogan regime demands for solidarity and instant regime support and, on the other hand,  deepening concern at the very clear signs of the regime abusing the coup drama for the purpose of enforcing near-totalitarian absolute power, and societal transformation. EU perceptions of Turkey´s downward spiral into something definitely unbefitting a membership candidate country were manifested in the November declaration by the European Parliament, where it recommended a freeze for the time being of further membership talks. But as a party (and ”hostage”) to a potentially mutually beneficial and strongly needed migration agreement, the EU Council in its December summit chose rather to sit idle in the boat, not breaking ties.
 
But at year´s end, at the time of the EU Council summit, the steps to constitutional change and presidential system referendum were already taken, as a result of the surprise move by the MHP leader (Bahceli) to change course and to accept to join hands with Erdogan, Bahceli arguing that in view of all the crises facing the country and the way the country was weakened by the prevailing gulf between Erdogan´s power  de facto and the unconstitutionality of this de facto power, legalizing his power position had become a strategic national necessity. The Turkish tradition of liberal democracy (albeit under Kemalist tutelage) and messy coalition governments were in any case obsolete and overtaken by events. Arguing along these lines, Bahceli extended the MHP helping hand to achieve the necessary 3/5 majority that the AKP could not, with its vote strength from the November 1 election, reach on its own.
 
And in parallel to this, during the second half of 2016, Ankara/Erdogan had entered into an adventurous course of action in its Syria (and Iraq) policies, first ”normalizing” ties with Russia, then embarking on the ”Euphrates Shield” incursion into Syrian soil, then appealing to the outgoing Obama administration and subsequently the incoming Trump administration to halt the established anti-IS co-operation with the Syrian Kurds (PYD/YPG), then – as eastern Aleppo was about to fall to the combined Assad/Russia/Iran/Hezbollah forces – helping the pro-Assad side consolidate its Aleppo victory by offering evacuation assistance, and then agreeing with Russia and Iran on terms for a ceasefire arrangement, with the US in government transition a passive observer.
 
Adventurous entanglement in the destructive complexities of the anti-IS and the anticipated post-IS struggles in Syria and Iraq added to the domestic turbulence in also shaking the Turkish economy, with most or all economic indicators twinkling red as the country entered 2017 and the referendum campaign.
 
 
So there we are now, weeks ahead of the referendum. These are the ingredients of the political context, and the political culture.
 
 
​vote with low turnout, he could then move into the newly erected mega palace, Aksaray, as the new president with clearly stated ambitions to be an active head of the executive and pledging to seek formalization of this by constitutional change – an aim later codified as priority one by an obedient AKP in its May 2016 congress.


But well before that, there was the Kobane drama in northernmost Syria, autumn 2014, preceded inside Turkey by a period of ”resolution process” on the Kurdish question between Ankara and various players within the Kurdish movement, And preceding Kobane, in the presidential election in Turkey, the co-chair of the HDP, Selahattin Demirtas, had gained a surprising near 10% - later encouraging the HDP to risk participating in the June 7 2015 parliamentary elections as a party (in view of the draconian 10% threshold and the risk of losing it all, benefiting the AKP, if the threshold could not be reached). HDP/Demirtas confidence and the Kobane drama had a significant impact on events to follow.


Kobane was a game changer in several ways. It gained Syrian-Kurdish PYD/YPG international moral recognition, the Kurdish forces succeding with US help to resist IS siege and aggression, it convinced the US to re-enter militarily into a region president Obama had pledged never to re-enter, it led to a game-changing process of US-Syrian Kurdish military cooperation, in going after IS, and it led to upheaval in south-eastern Turkey and to the end of the Ankara-PKK ”resolution process”.


The next – potential - game changer was the June 2015 parliamentary election. In the political process preceding June 7 it was gradually becoming clear that developments in Syria had started to make Turkey´s Davutoglu-orchestrated anti-Assad (and anti-PYD/YPG) Syria policy increasingly untenable, that this and other trends made team Erdogan feel vulnerable to risks of diminishing popularity, that the ”resolution process” on the Kurdish question was going down the drain and that the HDP was definitely not going to be interested in a trade-off with Erdogan and his AKP,  increased Kurdish rights in exchange for Kurdish/HDP support for Erdogan´s desired presidential system plans. Additionally that the HDP was gaining ground in political polls, over and above what Kurdish representatives would normally receive, the HDP being seen by many liberals and leftists as the best or only chance to stop the AKP from continued supremacy and Erdogan from unlimited power. Additionally further, that in team Erdogan´s pre-election assessments the risk of jeopardizing Turkish nationalist votes had started to weigh heavier than hopes for a prestigious ”resolution process” success. And meanwhile the costs for maintaining the process tended to rise, on the south-eastern ground.


The outcome of the June 7 elections seemed at the time to be a real game changer, with the AKP losing its own majority and consequently having – first time since the beginning in 2002 – to venture into the art of power sharing, and with the HDP gaining some 13% and a significant proportion of parliamentary seats, 80, equalling the Turkish-nationalist MHP, whose leader, Bahceli, soon stated that co-governing with the Kurdish-nationalist HDP was unthinkable, thus making clear that a joint opposition (non-AKP) government was unattainable, leaving a coalition government with the AKP dominant part as the only option. Futile coalition negotiations that summer seemed to confirm that coalition terms between the AKP and any and all opposition parties were a priori non-starters. And by the time, late that summer, president Erdogan declared that all coalition negotiations had failed and that therefore re-election had become a necessity, the general impression was that Erdogan/AKP interest in coalition power sharing had been null and void all along. That impression had been fostered not least by other developments that same turbulent summer.


These developments, causing and fuelling a crisis atmosphere in the country, were about the PKK and about IS, the Islamic State (or ISIL, ISIS or Daesh), and president Erdogan´s decision weeks after the fateful June elections to both re-open large-scale anti-insurgency warfare with the PKK and to agree with the US (after lengthy negotiations) for Turkey to enter into partnership with the anti-Daesh coalition and, among other steps, to open the Incirlic base for coalition warfare against the IS/Daesh in Syria. So from then on, Turkey was involved in two separate, cross-boundary anti-terror campaigns, as it re-entered into a new electoral campaign, now with November 1 as the target date. Simultaneously with these developments, the refugee crisis started to hit Turkey, and, via Turkey and the Aegean, the EU. In the resulting atmosphere of crisis, the Turkish electorate (expectedly, one could say in retrospect, although pollsters generally missed it) chose to ”play safe” and saw to it that Erdogan and his AKP regained its majority with nearly 50% of the votes, with the HDP and the MHP only narrowly surviving the 10% threshold, in the case of the HDP in spite (or because) of an intense governmental intimidation campaign.


In parallel with these domestic developments, the foreign policy area went ”from bad to worse”. Turkey´s policy options having been further complicated and diminished by the Ryssian decision in late September to enter militarily into the Syrian scene in explicit support of Turkey´s main foe, the Assad regime, the shoot-down incident on November 24 created an open crisis between Ryssia and Turkey, with a string of punitive Russian actions futher hurting the Turkish economy and reducing its manouvering space in the Middle East, later forcing Ankara to admit diplomatic defeat and need for strategic retreat – seeking ”more friends and fewer enemies”, as later explained.


Then came the even more dramatic year 2016, with a string of terror attacks of mixed PKK and IS perpetrator origins, the year culminating with the spectacular assasination of the Russian ambassador and the new-year Reina night club massacre, with the foiled July 15 coup d´etat and with the ensuing acceleration of opposition purge, state of emergency and rule by decree – and with the strategic AKP-MHP agreement to set in motion a process towards referendum and presidential system.


One ingredient in the 2016 drama was the further stepped-up campaign against the Gulenists, officially classifying them as a terror organization (”FETÖ”) - leaving Ankara now with 3 terror targets, PKK, IS and ”FETÖ”, another was the AKP congress decision in May to change prime ministers (Davutoglu bowing out and Yilderim bowing in), to seek normalization with Russia and Israel in a foreign policy adjustment primarily to pressing Syrian realities, and to prioritize the transfer to a presidential system.


But before that, the strategic EU-Turkey migration agreement happened, March 18, with Turkey pledging to stop further migration waves across the Aegean, to integrate migrants in Turkey and to receive returnees from Greece, in exchange for the EU pledging to financially support refugee integration in Turkey, to receive from Turkey refugees corresponding to returnee numbers, to upgrade EU-Turkey membership talks and to consider visa liberalization for Turks to Schengen countries, under certain conditions. This was a Davutoglu-Merkel negotiated pragmatic deal that was to prove as difficult to implement fully as it was controversial on both sides. Paradoxically it can be said one year later that the deal proved as effective in actually stopping most of the Aegean crossings as it was ineffective in promoting the overall EU-Turkey relationship, suffering from other strains and relationship vulnerabilities.


So the July 15 failed coup came as a manifestation, albeit a surprise manifestation to most, of these various ingredients and conflicts. Still with many questions unanswered as to who, what, when and why, the fact of the coup being resisted and (therefore) violent and (therefore) failed presented president, party and government with a golden opportunity (”A gift from God”, as Erdogan was quoted as admitting), to dramatically further consolidate its power and to stampede plot suspects specifically and – gradually – regime opponents generally. So accompanied by the string of terrorist attacks, the second half of 2016 witnessed an unprecedented purge of targeted people from all walks of life, with the gradually extended state of emergency providing the legal justification and the foiled coup and its victims providing the pumped-up revolutionary tool of supporter mobilization, and polarization.
 
Meanwhile, the EU was a bit stuck in the dilemma of how to navigate between the Erdogan regime demands for solidarity and instant regime support and, on the other hand,  deepening concern at the very clear signs of the regime abusing the coup drama for the purpose of enforcing near-totalitarian absolute power, and societal transformation. EU perceptions of Turkey´s downward spiral into something definitely unbefitting a membership candidate country were manifested in the November declaration by the European Parliament, where it recommended a freeze for the time being of further membership talks. But as a party (and ”hostage”) to a potentially mutually beneficial and strongly needed migration agreement, the EU Council in its December summit chose rather to sit idle in the boat, not breaking ties.


But at year´s end, at the time of the EU Council summit, the steps to constitutional change and presidential system referendum were already taken, as a result of the surprise move by the MHP leader (Bahceli) to change course and to accept to join hands with Erdogan, Bahceli arguing that in view of all the crises facing the country and the way the country was weakened by the prevailing gulf between Erdogan´s power de de facto and the unconstitutionality of this de facto power, legalizing his power position had become a strategic national necessity. The Turkish tradition of liberal democracy (albeit under Kemalist tutelage) and messy coalition governments were in any case obsolete and overtaken by events. Arguing along these lines, Bahceli extended the MHP helping hand to achieve the necessary 3/5 majority that the AKP could not, with its vote strength from the November 1 election, reach on its own.


And in parallel to this, during the second half of 2016, Ankara/Erdogan had entered into an adventurous course of action in its Syria (and Iraq) policies, first ”normalizing” ties with Russia, then embarking on the ”Euphrates Shield” incursion into Syrian soil, then appealing to the outgoing Obama administration and subsequently the incoming Trump administration to halt the established anti-IS co-operation with the Syrian Kurds (PYD/YPG), then – as eastern Aleppo was about to fall to the combined Assad/Russia/Iran/Hezbollah forces – helping the pro-Assad side consolidate its Aleppo victory by offering evacuation assistance, and then agreeing with Russia and Iran on terms for a ceasefire arrangement, with the US in government transition a passive observer.


Adventurous entanglement in the destructive complexities of the anti-IS and the anticipated post-IS struggles in Syria and Iraq added to the domestic turbulence in also shaking the Turkish economy, with most or all economic indicators twinkling red as the country entered 2017 and the referendum campaign.




So there we are now, weeks ahead of the referendum. These are the ingredients of the political context, and the political culture.



Link to part II www.lelundin.org/guest-contributions/turkeys-referendum-yes-or-no-to-democracy-by-amb-ret-michael-sahlin6688367here