Turkey Votes To Replace Parliamentary System With Presidential

          

The Republic People’s Party, Turkey’s main opposition party, have announced they will be contesting the validity of 60% of the ballots, after unconfirmed reports of large numbers of votes without official stamps.

This protest followed Sunday’s 51.5% – 48.5 per cent vote by Turks to grant President Recep Tayyip Erdogan sweeping new powers in a referendum.

Erdogan supporters says replacing the parliamentary system with an executive presidency would modernise the country.

The process is not without controversies as opponents have attacked a decision to accept unstamped ballot papers as valid unless proven otherwise.

With the “Yes” vote, President Erdogan could remain in office until 2029.

Three people were shot dead near a polling station in the south-eastern province of Diyarbakir, reportedly during a dispute over how they were voting.

About 55 million people were eligible to vote across 167,000 polling stations, and turnout is said to have been high.

Deputy Prime Minister Veysi Kaynak said the “Yes” votes were lower than expected. “But still they had their ways.

This change represent the most sweeping programme of constitutional changes since Turkey became a republic almost a century ago.

Mr Erdogan would be given vastly enhanced powers to appoint cabinet ministers, issue decrees, choose senior judges and dissolve parliament.

The new system would scrap the role of prime minister and concentrate power in the hands of the president, placing all state bureaucracy under his control.

Mr Erdogan argued that the changes are needed to address Turkey’s security challenges nine months after an attempted coup, and to avoid the fragile coalition governments of the past.

“This public vote is [about] a new governing system in Turkey, a choice about change and transition,” he said after casting his vote in Istanbul.

The new system, he argues, will resemble those in France and the US and will bring calm in a time of turmoil marked by a Kurdish insurgency, Islamist militancy and conflict in neighbouring Syria, which has led to a huge refugee influx.

Critics of the proposed changes fear the move would make the president’s position too powerful, arguing that it would amount to one-man rule, without the checks and balances of other presidential systems.

They say his ability to retain ties to a political party – Mr Erdogan could resume leadership of the AK Party (AKP) he co-founded – would end any chance of impartiality.

Kemal Kilicdaroglu, leader of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), told a rally in Ankara that “We will put 80 million people… on a bus with no brakes,” he said.