HUSEYIN ALDEMIR / REUTERS

SNAPSHOT April 16, 2017

After Erdogan's Referendum Victory

Turkey's Polarization Will Only Deepen

By Michael J. Koplow

A
s Turkey watchers obsessively monitored the results of the Turkish
constitutional referendum on Sunday, it appeared for a few short hours
that something momentous was taking place. Across Turkey, the Yes votes
that would transform Turkey from a parliamentary system into a
presidential one and create a highly empowered presidency with few meaningful
checks and balances seemed to be underperforming expectations. As Istanbul,
Ankara, and IzmirTurkeys three largest cities and the rst two reliable AKP
bastions during its nearly 15-year reignall voted No, there was a brief moment
where it looked as if President Recep Tayyip Erdogan was going to be handed his
rst real defeat. Although the Yes vote pulled ahead and the constitutional
amendments passed, many in the opposition camp and its supporters are taking
solace in the narrow margin of victory and the fact that Turkeys capital along with
its biggest city (and Erdogans hometown) both rejected the governments agenda.
Their hope is that this portends a new willingness to compromise on Erdogans
part.

This hope is misplaced. Narrow victories are nothing new for Erdogan and the
Justice and Development Party (AKP), who saw their seats in the Grand National
Assembly decrease in three successive parliamentary elections, and who fell nine
full percentage points from the June 2011 elections to the June 2015 round.
Following the 2015 election, Erdogan did not change his tune but instead doubled
down, campaigning for the AKP despite being constitutionally barred from doing
so, hounding his political opponents, and stepping up his campaign against the
terrorist Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) in order to make the argument that only a
stronger show of support for the AKP would return stability to Turkey. The
aftermath of this latest victory will be similar. Erdogan is not going to be cowed by
the latest evidence of Turkeys polarization; rather, he will do everything he can to
deepen that polarization.

The lead-up to the referendum was a microcosm of everything that has led to the
replacement of Turkish democracy with competitive authoritarianism. The election
itself was not free or fair, as the government did all it could to suppress votes in the
heavily Kurdish southeast, jailed opposition politicians, ensured that the media gave
nearly exclusive coverage to Yes supporters, and detained and assaulted No
campaigners. This all took place against the backdrop of the aftermath of the failed
July 15 coup attempt and the hundreds of thousands of imprisonments and purges
of government employees that followed. Erdogan and the AKP have consistently
argued that a vote to amend the constitution and create an executive presidency is
critical in order to win the ght against the Glenist coup plotters and the PKK,
and that a No vote is akin to voting for terrorists. Despite Erdogans eorts to do
everything he could to put his thumb on the scale and predetermine the results, as
well as all of the enormous burdens that the government placed on the No camp,
Erdogan only narrowly won. Now that he has his win, he is not going to suddenly
shift course and decide that his strategy so far has been wrong or damaging to the
country, leading to a narrow rather than a broad victory. He will conclude that the
problem has been that he has not gone far enough.

Turkey is about to become more divided than ever.

Turkey is about to become more divided than ever. Only the barest majority voted
to upend Turkeys system of government, subsume the powers of the legislature and
the judiciary to one person, and eectively keep Erdogan in oce for at least
another decade. Many in the No camp questioned the legitimacy of the vote as soon
as the government declared victory, and the opposition is already contesting the
referendum results. This would be damaging enough to the political and social
fabric of a country whose institutions were in perfect health, but in Turkeywhere
the government has smashed the judiciarys independence and eviscerated the
bureaucracyit has the potential to produce a complete and nal rupture between
those who support the governments legitimacy and those who dont. Nobody who
supports the opposition will believe a court that declares no election irregularities
or suspicious vote-counting, and nobody who voted No will have any patience for
Erdogans inevitable declaration of a great victory over the forces of terrorism,
foreign domination, and anarchy. A responsible leader would do everything to
lower the ames, but Erdogans track record suggests a dierent response will be
forthcoming.

Aside from a brief interlude when the AKPs sustainability was unclear, Erdogan
has spent his entire political career fostering divisions he can use to his advantage.
Losing Istanbul and Ankara will only convince him that he must be even more
vigilant in his search for monsters to destroy, and that the vote was only so close
because the Glenist and Kurdish terrorists, their media sympathizers, and their
foreign supporters have not been suciently routed from Turkey. The crackdowns
on journalists, academics, and insuciently loyal government employees is about to
get worse rather than better. Erdogan will portray anyone who does not support the
new presidential system that has been voted in by the Turkish people as an enemy
of Turkey who serves traitorous masters. The closeness of the referendum returns
will mandate a renewed initiative to wipe out enemies, real and imagined, rather
than a reconsideration of the real reasons that the vote was so close. Rather than
seeking to bridge the divide, Erdogan is going to try to push his opponents o the
cli.

In a country with functioning democratic institutions, polarization along these lines

prevents one side from doing whatever it wants. Institutions foster compromise and
fracture the governments unilateral power. Turkey is not such a country. Erdogan
is not magnanimous in victory or in defeat, and the referendum has presented him
with both. It may be darkest before the dawn, but for Turkey, the recent darkness is
only bringing it closer to midnight.
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