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ISTANBUL In the wake of an otherwise bitter defeat, Turkeys opposition parties found a silver lining: They had denied President Recep Tayyip Erdogan the thumping victory he craved in Sundays referendum on expanding his powers.

With nearly half of the country opposing the constitutional changes 51 percent voted in favor it seemed to provide a rare opening for Turkeys perennially weak opposition to challenge Erdogan and his Justice and Development Party, or AKP, a finely tuned, election-winning machine.

There was a problem, though: There may be no one to lead such a challenge.

Key opposition leaders are viewed as too soft to confront Turkeys hard-nosed leader or too narrow in their politics to gain broadappeal. And two of the countrys most dynamic opposition figures, both from the pro-Kurdish Peoples Democratic Party, were thrown into jail by the government last year.

In the referendum, voters were asked to choose yes or no on a set of constitutional changes that would change Turkeys system of government from parliamentary to presidential, a transformation that would give Erdogan vast new authority. The yes side won by more than 1 million votes.

Mahmut Ekinci, a retired lawyer who in past elections had voted for Turkeys main opposition party, the Republican Peoples Party, or CHP, said he voted for Erdogans side because it endowed Turkey with a strong leader.

CHP head Kemal Kilicdaroglu was gentlemanly, Ekinci said. A leader? No.

[What Erdogans narrow referendum victory means for Turkey]

The questions about the strength and ability of the opposition are especially urgent at a time when public debate about the razor-thin victory margin is raging, as are allegations by opposition parties and international observers that the vote was marred by ballot irregularities and other violations.

Erdogans opponents have a brief period in which to demonstrate their resolve to the electorate before he consolidates his hold on the levers of state, including the judiciary, and indelibly shapes the narrative of his referendum victory, analysts said.

The window may already be closing. On Wednesday, in a major setback for several opposition parties, the election board rejected their petitions to annul the results of the referendum over the panels decision to accept ballots lacking an official seal.

Also Wednesday, authorities detained dozens of people who had joined in protests that followed the referendum.

Erdogan and senior government officials say the vote is a settled matter. The public had spoken clearly, they say, no matter how narrow the margin of victory, and it was time to move on.

It doesnt matter if you win 1-0 or 5-0, Erdogan, a former semiprofessional soccer player, told CNN on Tuesday. The ultimate goal is to win the game.

Meanwhile, Erdogans government received an important boost from the Trump administration after the vote. On Monday, President Trump called Erdogan and congratulated him on the referendum win. And Wednesday, Turkish and U.S. officials said Trump and Erdogan would meet before the NATO summit in Brussels next month.

[Erdogan and Modi arent the Trumps of the East]

Some of the doubts about the Turkish opposition have focused on Kilicdaroglu, the courtly, soft-spoken head of the CHP. With his staid manner and background as a former bureaucrat, he was widely seen as no match for the sharp-tongued Erdogan, a savvy populist and tireless campaigner.

Even so, many supporters have credited Kilicdaroglu for the strategy that ensured the close result: making sure the CHP kept as low a profile as possible, to deny its critics a target for attacks.

The strategy was smart and acknowledged the partys disadvantages, said Asli Aydintasbas, an Istanbul-based fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations. At the same time, she said, it doesnt say great things about a political party that they have to keep a low profile.

There were other missteps by the CHP, she said, including its failure to comprehensively monitor polling stations in some parts of the country, its frequently ad hoc ground strategy during the campaign and a botched statement by Kilicdaroglu about a failed coup last summer that may have cost his side votes.

And in the last two weeks of the campaign, Erdogan upended the CHP strategy by focusing on Kilicdaroglu framing every criticism of the proposed changes as a spurious accusation by a feckless opposition leader, while criticizing Kilicdaroglus past performance in government, leading the national social security agency.

The subtext was, I may be an autocrat, but this guy is completely incompetent, Aydintasbas said.

Enis Berberoglu, a CHP lawmaker from Istanbul, called Erdogans focus on Kilicdaroglu cheap and said it had demonized the opposition leader just one example of an unfair campaign in which the president and his allies also had associated their opponents with terrorists, he said.

Going forward, the CHP would focus on making clear what happened during the election, Berberoglu said. The public would be watching what we do in the courts, on the streets, in meetings, he said.

Murat Yetkin, a political analyst and editor of the daily Hurriyet News, said the CHP leadership seemed to be doing everything it could on the legal front to force an investigation of the alleged voting irregularities, while also preventing a risky confrontation with pro-government forces by keeping its supporters from demonstrating in large numbers.

But perceptions will be hard to change. Days after the referendum, Kilicdaroglu had become a sensation on the Internet but not in the way he might have hoped. On social media, Turks passed around memes depicting the CHP leader as reacting mutedly to alarming things surrounding him, including Darth Vader and the creature from the film Alien seen on-screen bursting through someones chest.

Read more:

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As Erdogan gains power in Turkey, a weakened opposition tries to stand in his way - Washington Post

NEW YORK Any media outlet telling you that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoanlegitimately won the referendum vote is complicit in a historic fraud.

The free world has refused to get literate in the ways wily despots overpower the state and willingly overlooked the Putin-Chvez-Erdoan formula now in vogue: a servile media, judiciary and military; oligarchs owning the economy as proxies for the leader; a political opposition allowed to hobble around theatrically; subsidized trolls and bots shape-shifting the opinion-scape; and manufactured plebiscites precisely calibrated with myriad little tricks to produce the right outcome.

Were in the midst of a totalitarian resurgence; this is how its done in the new millennium.

Even after a heavily lopsided campaign, Erdoan has had to depend on stuffed ballot boxes. Some 1.5 million votes are currently being contested, a number that pretty much covers the margin of his 1.3-million-vote victory. Astonishingly, Turkeys electoral board announced that it would accept boxes full of ballots but without seals all such boxes thus far discovered being, mirabile dictu, full of Yes votes.

They didnt even have the good sense to generate a few illicit No boxes to sully the picture. Even more astonishingly, at one point, the same electoral authority publicly stated that such unsealed boxes had been counted in previous elections. Let that sink in for a long moment.

But thats a small quibble. The full scope of the Erdoan governments cheating has yet to emerge. How many Syrian refugees out of the 3 million living in the country were quickly enfranchised for the purpose? How many ballot centers were moved around in the Kurdish areas in recent weeks to complicate voting? Who will investigate the Erdoan governments multiple rigging strategies? The same high election council that his government has stuffed with sycophants.

A march at the Kadikoy district in Istanbul against the constitutional reform | Bulent Kilic/AFP via Getty Images

I havent yet mentioned the hundreds of thousands jailed, intimidated and sacked; the scores of opposition candidates beaten up in the lead-up to the referendum. Lets not forget, also, the spastic remnants of media opposition prevented from arguing the No side with details of Erdoans family corruption, his incompetence in every foreign policy venture, his U-turns over Bashar al-Assad, Israel, Russia and his alienation of all Turkeys former strategic allies.

Not to mention the oddly hysterical incidents in Germany and the Netherlands, where various AKP ministers close to Erdoan rather operatically got themselves outlawed from conducting rallies. The entire exercise was clearly designed as a noisy farce. While Erdoan chastised the Dutch for suppressing democracy, for supporting Hitler in World War II and the like, similar scenes occurred in Germany, also home to large a large population of expatriate Turks who, it comes as no surprise, voted Yes by a large margin.

A government that endangers the welfare of its citizens abroad like this is capable of anything. The Turkish consular authorities supervising ballots in Germany and the Netherlands have long been hand-picked Erdoanists. You dont have to be a conspiracy nut to wonder about vote-rigging there as numbers were transferred back to Ankara.

Erdoans relentless political chicanery offers a roadmap to todays populist dictators on how to engineer apparently democratic triumphs on their way to disabling democracy.

Erdoan deliberately provoked chaos then offered himself up as a solution. He allowed ISIS to operate openly in Turkey; he ignited a civil war against the Kurdish population to punish them for voting against him in a crucial national election; he kept the Syrian border porous so the instability there would migrate into Turkey. He persecuted the military until they revolted, accusing outside forces of fomenting the trouble, most recently the Glenists. With rolling Robespierre-like prosecutions, he warned half the country that opposing him will wreck their lives. He destroyed the economy but subsidized his supporters.

The only way Erdoan has achieved any political success is by using the body politic against itself. In essence, he has delegitimized governance in order to present himself as the only way to restore it.

Erdogan supporters cheer him following the referendum vote count | Turkish government via EPA

But in so doing, he has also entirely delegitimized himself. After all the bludgeoning, he eked out a dodgy razor-thin majority in a kangaroo plebiscite. He and other AKP leaders spoke optimistically about inclusion after declaring (early) victory, claiming the result would benefit all Turks. Only losers complain about fairness, they said.

And theres the rub in the murky political psychology of the new era, successful retention of power, even successful election-rigging, denotes a kind of virtue when chaos is the threatened alternative. The strongmans promise of continuity, stability and firmness especially while he causes turbulence matters more than legitimacy, indeed equals legitimacy.

Winning pseudo-elections justifies all abuses in retrospect. The leader never quite feels legitimate and spends the states resources incessantly trying to gain it by whatever means. Eerily familiar, no? Get used to it in Turkey and around the world.

Melik Kaylan is a foreign affairs columnist for Forbes.com and co-author of The Russia-China Axis: The New Cold War (Encounter Books, 2014).

More here:
Erdoan's power grab follows authoritarian script - POLITICO.eu

The observers sent by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights, or ODIHR, of which I am the director, spent the month leading up to and including referendum day following and assessing virtually all aspects of the referendum. The assessment contained in the preliminary statement the observers issued Monday identified significant shortcomings. The public reaction to that assessment on the part of the Turkish authorities, including President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has been harsh, and has questioned the role of observers. This is unfortunate, as the purpose of the statement, and of ODIHR's mandate in general, is to assist OSCE participating states, including Turkey, in improving their electoral processes.

Our preliminary statement points to where improvements are needed.

The fact that this broad, complex set of constitutional amendments was reduced to a "Yes" or "No" vote -- counter to good practice for referendums -- is only the most obvious example.

Less obvious, perhaps, but more troubling are those issues we identified that ultimately tilted the playing field in favor of one side in the contest -- the "Yes" campaign.

This was the case, for example, in the decision as to who was allowed to participate fully in the campaign. Just 10 of the 92 registered parties in the country met the legal eligibility requirements to campaign, and civil society organizations were shut out of the process. Leading national officials, including Erdogan, as well as many more at the local level, actively campaigned for the "Yes" side, while efforts by "No" campaigners were obstructed.

This was also the case when it came to coverage of the referendum campaign in the media. The laws governing the process do not provide for equal coverage of the two sides but give preference to the President and the ruling party in the allocation of free airtime. One regulation passed under the state of emergency, introduced after the failed coup last July, removed sanctions on media outlets for biased coverage, sending a clear signal the principles of impartiality and balance in reporting didn't matter. Our media monitoring results showed the "Yes" campaign dominated the coverage.

The campaign rhetoric used by some senior national and local officials equated "No" supporters with terrorist sympathizers, while those same "No" campaigners in numerous cases faced police interventions or violent scuffles at their events.

The political environment for the entire process was heavily influenced by the state of emergency that remains in effect, put in place following the failed coup.

It is clear that governments in all democratic societies have the responsibility to provide for the security of those living in their countries and of the democratic system itself. That the Turkish authorities had a duty to take measures following the failed coup is not in question.

At the same time, a balance has to be found that ensures fundamental freedoms at the center of truly democratic systems are protected. While there had been undue limitations in the Turkish Constitution even before the events of July, the freedoms of assembly and speech, for example, were even further restricted under the extraordinary state-of-emergency powers -- particularly as a result of measures introduced by provincial governors.

The assessment by our observation mission, together with observers from the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, highlighted these and other areas where the referendum process fell short of OSCE commitments and other international standards for democratic elections as well as of Turkey's own laws.

In about eight weeks we will release our final report on the referendum, including not only an assessment of the process in greater depth but also a set of recommendations on how electoral processes can be improved. As in any country, whether the Turkish authorities consider following up on these recommendations comes down to political will.

The simple answer to this criticism is that election observation has an important place in promoting the principles and standards that Turkey has signed onto as an OSCE participating state. It is my hope that, given this, our assessment will ultimately be taken by the Turkish authorities for what it is -- an effort in good faith by our office to help improve electoral processes in Turkey.

This is the mandate ODIHR has been given by all 57 countries in the OSCE, a mandate that we follow in our observation activities across the entire OSCE region.

Read the rest here:
Erdogan's criticism of election observers is deeply troubling - CNN

Russian President Vladimir Putin has congratulated Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on a referendum that will expand his powers, the Kremlin and Turkish state media said on April 18.

The Kremlin said that Putin phoned Erdogan and congratulated him on the "successful conduct" the referendum.

A day earlier, U.S. President Donald Trump congratulated Erdogan on his "victory" in the referendum, which is being challenged by the opposition and has been greeted coolly by the European Union.

Turkish media said Putin and Erdogan emphasized the importance of normalizing ties and maintaining a cease-fire in Syria that was jointly brokered by Ankara and Moscow earlier this year.

The Kremlin said that the cease-fire and Syrian peace talks need to be reinforced.

It also said both sides called for an unprejudiced investigation into the suspected chemical attack in Syria earlier this month that killed more than 80 people.

Ankara accuses President Bashar al-Assad's government of carrying out the attack with the deadly nerve agent sarin.

Russia and Assad's government have alleged government bombs could have hit rebel chemical weapons stocks or that the suspected attack was staged -- claims that the United States and other countries have dismissed.

The rest is here:
Putin Congratulates Turkey's Erdogan Over Vote Expanding Powers - RadioFreeEurope/RadioLiberty

Exclusive: Turkish President Erdogans push toward nationalistic authoritarianism has an important ally in the political arm of the neo-fascist Grey Wolves, reports Jonathan Marshall.

By Jonathan Marshall

All but one of Turkeys major opposition parties denounced Sundays referendum to create an authoritarian new presidential system as marred by fraud and as a threat to the countrys political freedoms. The exception was the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), founded in 1969 to promote a neo-fascist, ultranationalist program. Its fortunes bear close watching as a clue to Turkeys political direction.

The MHP and its paramilitary wing, the Grey Wolves, were among the leaders of Turkeys death squad violence against leftist intellectuals, academics, and Kurdish activists in the 1970s and 1980s. In return, right-wing state security forces protected their organized criminal operations, including drug trafficking. One associate of the Grey Wolves, Mehmet Ali Agca, was convicted of trying to assassinate Pope John Paul II in 1981.

A New York Times reporter at that time described the MHPs followers as a xenophobic, fanatically nationalist, neofascist network steeped in violence. The partys U.S.-trained leader helped execute a successful military coup in 1960, and by 1980 was implicated in smuggling heroin into Western Europe.

Turkish Prime Minster (now President) Recep Tayyip Erdogan broke the back of that deep state alliance of secret intelligence, criminal, and right-wing forces through mass purges and indictments in 2008. Last year, however, he made up with many of these former opponents, making them allies of his own increasingly authoritarian government and his military adventures in Syria and Iraq.

One winner in that realignment was the MHP. Like the National Front in France, the MHP has shed many of its extremist positions in recent years to join the mainstream of respectable politics in Turkey.

Still, its racist roots were exposed to full public view in 2015, when Grey Wolves members attacked a South Korean tourist in Istanbul and hung banners saying We crave Chinese blood to protest Beijings crackdown on Turkic separatists. The MHPs leader, Devlet Bahceli, defended his street supporters, saying how are you going to differentiate between Korean and Chinese? They both have slanted eyes. Does it really matter?

As an advocate of ethnic Turkish supremacy, moreover, the MHP remains violently opposed to making any concessions to Kurdish separatists, and denounced Erdogan for starting peace talks with them in 2013.

Allies Against the Kurds

Two years later, Erdogan reversed course and began waging total war against the Kurds, both at home and in Syria. That set the stage for a tacit alliance between his ruling party, the AKP, and the MHP.

Grey Wolves thugs attacked offices of the opposition Peoples Democratic Party, which supports the rights of Kurds and other political minorities. Senior MHP officials, along with members of their youth organization, also joined the fighting in Syria to support ethnic Turks against the Assad government and Syrian Kurds. Remarked one Turkish journalist, The ultranationalists are the most fertile pool for secret operations.

Even with his opponents cowering or imprisoned under a state of emergency declared after a failed military coup last year, Erdogan needed the MHP, which holds 36 seats in the 550-member parliament, to win approval of the constitutional amendments at issue in Sundays referendum. MHP officials reportedly hope to earn seats in the presidents new cabinet.

MHP leader Bahceli hailed Sundays vote to grant President Erdogan immense new powers as a very significant achievement and the final word for the future of the great Turkish nation. The head of the Grey Wolves vowed that his followers would take up our arms and fight if necessary to defend the outcome.

Fighting may indeed become inevitable if opponents, backed by foreign election observers, continue to contest the referendum vote.

Even if they are demoralized in their defeat, Erdogans project will arouse significant resistance among the various No camps, comments Steven Cook, a Mideast expert at the Council on Foreign Relations. The predictable result will be the continuation of the purge that has been going on since even before last Julys failed coup including more arrests and the additional delegitimization of Erdogans parliamentary opposition. All of this will further destabilize Turkish politics.

It remains to be seen how the Trump administration will deal with Turkeys increasingly authoritarian regime and aggressive foreign policy. President Trumps first national security adviser, retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, took more than half a million dollars from a pro-Erdogan Turkish businessman to promote Ankaras interests. Flynn was also joined by House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes for a private meeting at Trump Hotel in Washington with Foreign Minister Mevlt avu?o?lu on Jan. 18.

More important than secret lobbying activity, however, is the strategic importance of U.S. access to Incirlik Air Base in Turkey, from which U.S. warplanes launch attacks in Syria. The base also houses some 50 hydrogen bombs for NATO, giving Washington all the more reason to stay friendly with the Turkish government.

But if Erdogan and his new allies among Turkeys ultranationalist right continue to make new enemies at home and abroad, the Trump administration will need to rethink the viability of continuing to rely on Ankara to make possible continued military intervention in the Middle East.

Jonathan Marshall is author of Turkeys Revival of a Dirty Deep State, Turkeys Nukes: A Sum of All Fears, and Coups Inside NATO: A Disturbing History.

See original here:
Erdogan's Neo-Fascist Turkish Allies - Consortium News