Turkey's constitutional referendum Can Erdogan pull it off?

Turkey prepares to vote on a constitutional-reform package that pits the government against the generals

Sep 9th 2010 | ankara and Istanbul

SALIH SEZGIN, a Kurd, was in Diyarbakir prison when Turkey’s generals seized power in 1980. “After the coup I was forced to eat my own shit and repeatedly raped with a truncheon,” he recalls. Should Turks approve a set of constitutional reforms that will be put to a nationwide vote on September 12th, the officers who committed such horrors on Mr Sezgin and more than half a million other Turks who were arrested and tortured after the coup will no longer be immune from prosecution.
Turkey’s prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has cast the reforms as a stab in the heart of the September 1980 coup plotters. The referendum falls on its 30th anniversary. But Mr Erdogan’s critics view the changes as a final assault on Ataturk’s secular republic.
For the common voter the referendum boils down to a popularity contest between the ruling AK party and the main opposition Republican party (CHP), which sees itself as the custodian of Turkey’s secular heritage. Polls suggest that the race will be tight, with “yes” votes prevailing by five to six percentage points. The campaign has become polarised. “Yes” campaigners have been pelted with eggs. A youth wearing a “no” T-shirt was beaten by police.
AK has been steadily trimming the army’s powers since taking power in 2002, and many of the proposed amendments take aim at the generals: coup plotters will henceforth be tried in civilian courts and civilians will no longer be tried in military ones. Officers booted out by the army for their political views will be able to seek legal redress. Turkey’s secular elite see the army as their last line of defence against what they fear is encroaching Islamism under Mr Erdogan’s rule. The opposition has been playing on these doubts. One CHP billboard, featuring a chador-clad figure, called on voters to vote no “if you don’t want to be forced to dress like nuns”.
At the core of the package is a controversial overhaul of the judiciary, which AK accuses of deferring to the generals. The opposition’s line is that having defanged the army, AK is now bent on asserting its control over the law. Over the years Turkey’s prosecutors have banned dozens of parties (mostly Kurdish ones). In 2008 AK itself narrowly escaped being shut down on the thinly supported charge that it was seeking to introduce sharia rule.
Under the proposed changes party closures will have to be approved by parliament, and membership of the constitutional court will be expanded, giving parliament and the president greater say in its composition. At present senior judges get to vet candidates, “thereby ensuring,” argues Osman Can, a former constitutional-court rapporteur, “that only like-minded Kemalist members get promoted and their militarist mentality perpetuated”.
At a recent rally in Diyarbakir, the unofficial capital of Turkey’s Kurdish south-east, Mr Erdogan renewed his promise to write an entirely new constitution, something Turkey’s Kurds have long sought. But Peace and Democracy, the largest Kurdish party, has ordered its supporters to boycott the referendum. This strategy is being driven by the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), the northern Iraq-based rebel group that has been fighting for Kurdish autonomy over the past 26 years. Having sharply escalated its attacks in recent months, on August 13th it announced a ceasefire, saying it was giving AK until September 20th to meet its demands. These include reducing the 10% voter-support threshold needed for a party to enter parliament, a rule originally devised to keep the Kurds out. The PKK also says the government must talk to Abdullah Ocalan, its imprisoned leader.
Murat Karayilan, the PKK’s top commander in the field, is threatening to resume the fighting should AK fail to comply. Yet he knows that with parliamentary elections due by next July Mr Erdogan is unlikely to risk upsetting nationalist voters by humouring the Kurds. The dilemma for the prime minister is that greater PKK violence entails greater army influence.
The good news is that the generals are keeping to themselves these days and have aired no views on the referendum. The CHP is therefore having to win over voters by itself. And Kemal Kilicdaroglu, its newly elected leader, has proved to be an adept campaigner. Like Mr Erdogan he has the common touch. His reputation is squeaky clean. Better still, he is spearheading demands for a thoroughly new constitution rather than a few tweaks; he too insists that the 10% rule should be amended.
The lack of a credible reformist opposition has long been a weakness of Turkish democracy. Mr Kilicdaroglu is poised to redress this imbalance. The outcome of the referendum will reveal by how much.
economist