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Turkeys April 16 referendum will be long remembered as a turning point in the countrys political history.

Turks were asked to grant additional executive powers to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, bringing an end to the separation of powers. The 18 proposed constitutional amendments grant the Turkish president sweeping authority over the executive, legislative and judiciary branches, including power to dismiss the Turkish Grand National Assembly and autonomy in drawing the state budget with minimal parliamentary oversight and directly appointing 12 members of the 15-member Constitutional Court. The post of prime minister will also be eliminated to make way for an executive president.

The meager 51.4 percent yes vote shows a divided Turkey. In main urban centers and western Turkey, people overwhelmingly voted against the executive presidency, while rural and poorer segments of the Turkish society mostly voted in favor of strong-man rule.

The no campaign has called for the cancellation of the vote due to fraud. They argue that the High Electoral Board unlawfully allowed for the count of 1.3 million unofficiated yes ballots halfway through the count, tilting the result in favor of Erdogan. A group of international observers has also voiced concerns over the legality of the referendum.

Lets take a look at how a once trustworthy NATO ally, an aspiring EU candidate and an emerging power came to the brink of autocracy.

Erdogans AKP, the Justice and Development Party, has been running the country since 2002. This 15-year-long journey started with a series of democratization reforms supported with steady economic growth.

Ever since his days as the mayor of Istanbul during the 1990s, Erdogan has built his political career as a crafty politician willing and capable of making temporary deals with nonconventional partners against common enemies. For example, Erdogans persistent struggle against the Turkish militarys influence over the regime helped him gain the alliance of the secretive Fetullah Gulen network.

Id argue that liberals in Washington, D.C. and in European capitals misread Erdogans ambitions. They saw him as an open-minded reformer who could bring Islam and democracy together at home and abroad. Barack Obama visited Turkey on his first major foreign trip in April 2009 to underline Turkeys unique role in the Middle East. I myself recently edited a volume that examines a period (2007-2011) when Turkish diplomats and businesspeople served as mediators in different parts of the world from the Western Balkans to Somalia, from Golan Heights to Afghanistan.

But that period was short-lived. The turning point in Turkeys slide toward authoritarianism came as the result of a major miscalculation in international politics.

In 2011, in the wake of the revolutionary uprisings in Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen, Libya and Syria, Turkeys former Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu saw a great opportunity for Erdogan and his AKP to leverage Turkeys liberal Islam model elsewhere in the Middle East.

Erdogan unconditionally supported Islamist groups across the region under the disguise of supporting democratization against dictatorships. Even after the revolution in Egypt failed, Erdogan persisted in pursuing pro-Muslim Brotherhood policies across the Middle East. As the Syrian civil war raged on, Turkey allowed jihadist fighters to cross from Turkey into Syria to fight against the Assad regime.

With time, Turkeys sizable democratic and liberal-minded population began to react against the growing government intervention in their way of life. The Gezi Park protests in summer of 2013 started against the demolishing of a central city park in Istanbul to build a shopping mall. However, it quickly turned into a widespread pro-democracy show of force against Erdogan and his brand of Islamist politics. This drove Erdogan to relinquish his ties with his former liberal allies.

Another thorny issue for Erdogan has been making peace with the countrys 14 million Kurds. Kurds have been demanding political and cultural autonomy from the central government in Ankara. Clashes between the the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) and Turkish military have cost lives of more than 40,000 people over the last four decades.

When official peace talks began between Abdullah Ocalan, the imprisoned leader of the PKK, and President Erdogan, a sense of optimism prevailed in the Kurdish towns of Turkey. But the peace process lacked parliamentary oversight, and it collapsed when Ankara refused to help the Kurdish fighters surrounded in September 2014 by the Islamic State in Kobane, Syria just a few hundred yards from the Turkish border.

The following summer, the AKP lost its majority in parliament when a pro-Kurdish party won a record number of seats. As a result, Erdogan unilaterally ended the peace process with the PKK. He built a new alliance with ultra nationalists that carried out retaliatory attacks in Kurdish population centers, further alienating the Kurds from the countrys political mainstream. Many elected Kurdish MPs and mayors have been imprisoned since the failed coup attempt in July.

Erdogans last and most formidable enemy turned out to be his former ally, the U.S.-based cleric Fetullah Gulen and his secretive and extensive network. Erdogan believes the Gulen network was behind the failed coup attempt of July 2016. He alleges the Gulenists wanted to retaliate against Erdogans punitive measures against their education, business and media networks in Turkey which began after corruption allegations against Erdogan and his family.

Turkey has been living in a state of emergency since July 2016. Erdogan claims that the new executive powers granted him in the referendum will allow him to single-handedly cleanse the enemies of the nation from the judiciary, military and media. Already, thousands of people have been forced out of their government jobs and put in high-security state prisons due to allegations of being a member of the Gulen network.

Is democracy dead in Turkey?

The 51.4 percent yes vote certainly seems to mark the beginning of the end for Turkeys fragile democracy. However, Erdogans clear defeat in Turkeys urban centers and in the western part of the country suggests that a self-confident pro-democracy movement could make life much more difficult than Erdogan expected in the coming months and years.

Doga Ulas Eralp, Professorial Lecturer, American University School of International Service

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

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A Turning Point For TurkeyAnd Democracy Across The Globe - GOOD Magazine

American democracy has always been a work in progress. What Abraham Lincoln called the unfinished work of ensuring government of the people, by the people, for the people has suffered its share of setbacks. For decades, Americans trust in government has been declining, signaling that not all was well. Yet until recently, democracy seemed secure in the United States.

No longer. President Donald Trump has unleashed a barrage of attacks on the underpinnings of democratic governance, threatening checks and balances, civil liberties, civil rights, and long-established norms. During last years presidential campaign, Trump discarded the notion of facts as necessary anchors of political discourse and challenged the legitimacy of his political opponent, threatening to lock her up if he won. Since his inauguration, he has castigated sections of the mainstream media as fake news and called them the enemy of the American people, attacked the judiciary, and claimedwithout evidencethat electoral fraud cost him victory in the popular vote. These displays of illiberalism suggest that the American project of self-governance, which Americans have long taken for granted, may be in a more precarious condition than most assumed.

How did the United States come to this point? And how can it revitalize its democracy? Two new books offer useful guidance. Democracy for Realists, by the political scientists Christopher Achen and Larry Bartels, helps explain the roots of the current crisis. And Democracy, by the historian David Moss, reveals how Americans have overcome political divisions in the past.

The authors of both books make clear that political conflicts in the United States are nothing new. Today, Americans face serious threats to their countrys democracy, but they can draw on a long tradition of conflict resolution. They should relearn how to use the institutions and toolsleadership, negotiation, and compromisethat have sustained American democracy in the past.

FALLING APART

In Democracy for Realists, Achen and Bartels explain that deep-seated social identities and group affiliations motivate political action far more than

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Democracy on the Brink - Foreign Affairs (subscription)

The election of Donald Trump as president of the United Statesa man who has praised dictators, encouraged violence among supporters, threatened to jail his rival, and labeled the mainstream media as the enemyhas raised fears that the United States may be heading toward authoritarianism. While predictions of a descent into fascism are overblown, the Trump presidency could push the United States into a mild form of what we call competitive authoritarianisma system in which meaningful democratic institutions exist yet the government abuses state power to disadvantage its opponents.

But the challenges facing American democracy have been emerging for decades, long before Trump arrived on the scene. Since the 1980s, deepening polarization and the radicalization of the Republican Party have weakened the institutional foundations that have long safeguarded U.S. democracymaking a Trump presidency considerably more dangerous today than it would have been in previous decades.

There is little reason to expect Americans commitment to democracy to serve as a safeguard against democratic erosion.

Paradoxically, the polarizing dynamics that now threaten democracy are rooted in the United States belated democratization. It was only in the early 1970sonce the civil rights movement and the federal government managed to stamp out authoritarianism in southern statesthat the country truly became democratic. Yet this process also helped divide Congress, realigning voters along racial lines and pushing the Republican Party further to the right. The resulting polarization both facilitated Trumps rise and left democratic institutions more vulnerable to his autocratic behavior.

The safeguards of democracy may not come from the quarters one might expect. American societys purported commitment to democracy is no guarantee against backsliding; nor are constitutional checks and balances, the bureaucracy, or the free press. Ultimately, it may be Trumps ability to mobilize public supportlimited if his administration performs poorly, but far greater in the event of a war or a major terrorist attackthat will determine American democracys fate.

WHAT BACKSLIDING

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Is America Still Safe for Democracy? - Foreign Affairs (subscription)

The Hindu

Challenges to party democracy The Hindu In the 21st century, among countries where there is electoral democracy, the dominant form is representative democracy. Daniele Caramani's paper, published in the American Political Science Review, titled 'Will vs. Reason, the populist and technocratic ...

Excerpt from:
Challenges to party democracy - The Hindu

Richard Nixon waves goodbye from the steps of his helicopter as he leaves the White House following a farewell address to his staff on Aug. 9, 1974.

There are striking parallels between Watergate and Russias intrusion in our election. In 1972, President Nixons reelection campaign broke into the DNC offices at the Watergate Hotel and wiretapped its phones, hoping to facilitate Nixons victory. In 2016, Russia hacked e-mails from the DNC and the Clinton campaign to help elect President Trump. Now, as then, at issue is whether a president and those closest to him colluded to attack our institutions.

For many, Watergate evokes nostalgia, proof our system works. But in the trenches it was brutal. So I asked William Cohen to assess the current inquiry in light of his central role in Nixons impeachment.

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Cohen became a three-term senator from Maine, then secretary of defense. But in 1973 he was 32, a freshman GOP congressman. While he laughingly casts himself as a rookie in hardball politics, his rookie mistake was having principles.

A lawyer, Cohen revered the rule of law. To his peers astonishment, he requested a spot on the Judiciary Committee, a political briar patch bristling with thorny issues like abortion and prayer in school. This proved a fateful choice the House Judiciary Committee is where impeachment begins.

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As Cohen settled into office, dogged investigative reporting surfaced increasing evidence of a White House cover-up forcing Nixon to allow Attorney General Richardson to appoint a special prosecutor, Archibald Cox, to conduct an independent investigation. Then the Senate Judiciary Committee uncovered the existence of White House tapes that might demonstrate Nixons complicity in the Watergate burglary and wiretaps.

Why is Trump rejecting a bipartisan proposal for a congressional investigation into Russian election-related hacking?

Cox subpoenaed the tapes. In the notorious Saturday Night Massacre, Nixon, to Cohens astonishment, ordered Richardson, whom Cohen knew and admired, to fire Cox. After Richardson and his deputy resigned in protest, Cox was removed.

Democrats argued that Nixon had no right to replace him. But Cohen perceived that a political stalemate could stymie the investigation. Eschewing party loyalty, he argued in The Washington Post that the inquiry would continue only were Leon Jaworski, Nixons new appointee, allowed to succeed Cox. Reversing its prior position, the Post adopted Cohens argument, and Jaworski took office.

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Lawyer-like, Cohen began absorbing the evidence against Nixon. In closed hearings, several committee Democrats started yielding time for Cohen to interrogate witnesses, further antagonizing Republicans. Pressure mounted. Nixon visited his district to rally support; at a meeting with GOP members of the Judiciary Committee, including Cohen, Nixon admonished: I may be a sonofabitch, but Im your sonofabitch. Still, when Nixon provided redacted transcripts instead of producing the tapes, Cohen inquired, How in the world did we go from the Federalist papers to edited transcripts?

In themselves, the transcripts indicated illegal maneuvering by Nixon. Jaworski sought to enforce Coxs subpoena, and the House authorized the Judiciary Committee to investigate the grounds for impeachment.

The committees Democratic chair, Peter Rodino, resolved to demand the tapes. Committee Republicans opposed him; two Democrats wanted to pursue impeachment forthwith. Once again Cohen broke ranks, providing Rodino with a one-vote majority.

His recompense was death threats some explicit, one involving a bomb. Constituents sent thousands of hostile letters. A fatalist by nature, Cohen wrote off his political future. Then the Supreme Court compelled Nixon to produce the tapes.

Cohen began comparing them with the transcripts a damning exercise. A small bipartisan group of committee members formed, centered on moderate Republicans like Cohen, struggling to draft articles of impeachment on which they could agree. His bipartisan colleagues asked Cohen to publicly defend two key articles, obstruction of justice and abuse of power, by laying out the specifics against Nixon.

Throughout this difficult work, the group kept faith with each other. After a televised debate which riveted millions of Americans, the committee including six of 17 Republicans voted out three articles.

A bitter impeachment loomed. Then another tape emerged, confirming Nixons involvement in the cover-up. Nixon resigned; the country escaped further trauma and Cohens career survived.

So how, 43 years later, does this experience illuminate the inquiry into possible collusion between Russia and Trumps campaign?

Watergate featured two strokes of luck the tapes themselves, and Nixons decision not to destroy them. But Cohen cites deeper and more sobering differences.

In his view, Russias intrusion in our election is more of an existential threat to our democracy than Nixon was. The power to impeach Nixon existed within our system; we cannot keep a foreign power from distorting our democracy. Thus it is all the more imperative to know whether they colluded with our president.

But while the stakes are greater, our will is not.

Rodino strove to run a scrupulous and bipartisan investigation, free from leaks that would undermine its credibility. By contrast, the Republican chair of the House Intelligence Committee, Devin Nunes, became embroiled in a web of leaks and lies orchestrated by Trumps White House.

During Watergate, Cohen was joined by moderate Republicans who placed country over partisan politics. Todays politics are viciously polarized, moderate Republicans virtually extinct.

Then, as now, the presidents supporters cast any inquiry as an effort to reverse an election. Striking today is the indifference of most Republican officeholders and voters to Russias attack on our election in particular, the House Republicans and their leaders. Protected by partisan cover, Trumps Justice Department is unlikely to appoint an independent special prosecutor free from political influence.

Finally, there is Americas burgeoning indifference to an objective search for facts. As Cohen puts it, There are no accepted truths any longer. It will be a long time, he fears, until we restore our common values with respect to truth and honesty.

Like William Cohen during Watergate, we can but try.

Read more here:
Echoes of Watergate in Russia's attack on US democracy - The Boston Globe