Looking In: Referendum (2)

Turkey is holding its referendum on constitutional changes legalizing President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s authoritarian dictatorship.Voting is now over in consulates around the world, yet the actual election is still almost a week away and polls are very close. Looking ahead, what will Turkey face if it chooses Yes or if it chooses No?

If No prevails, which I hope happens, Turkey will have only averted a drift into full-on dictatorship temporarily. Erdoğan is not the kind of leader who sees the election results against him and thinks, “I guess the people have spoken, we'll move on to the next thing.” As seen after the June 2015 election, when his AK Party lost the majority in parliament for the first time in its history, he prevented his party’s official leader from even pursuing serious coalition talks. Instead, he began a period of violent crackdown on the Kurdish population of the country, aimed at gathering nationalist support, and then called a second election only five months later in November 2015.

In this same vein, if No prevails and the people of Turkey refuse to submit to Erdoğan, he will not relent. He will once again crack down, possibly even harder, against the long-suffering Kurdish people of Turkey. Turkey is currently housing almost three million Syrian refugees and Erdoğan plans to increase his electoral power by giving a large portion of them citizenship. These refugees already receive a lot of support from the AKP government. If Erdoğan legalizes their status and allows them to vote, this overwhelmingly conservative and Arab population is likely to be beholden to Erdoğan’s conservative Islamist party, as opposed to the Turkish nationalists on the left or right or the pro-Kurdish social democrats.

In a country of around 55 million voting citizens, a change of 1 or 2 million would factor significantly into the results of any election, and Erdoğan would exploit this opportunity to the maximum. When he brings this referendum back, probably less than a year after the vote, he could win and achieve his goal. This is a grim look at a possible sequence of events that would be the desirable outcome for those supporting democracy in Turkey.

If the vote comes out Yes, all hope will likely end for Turkey to retain any sort of democratic status, freedom of expression or any other civil liberties. Erdoğan will have legally achieved the status of dictator and the people of Turkey will have given up the modicum of democracy they have now to empower Erdoğan’s totalitarian conservative Islamic state. Erdoğan, like any dictator -- especially after weathering a coup -- is constantly paranoid. Feeling more secure in his position, he will have a free hand to meddle in regional affairs, most importantly in Syria. Increased Turkish interventionism will be to the detriment of the Kurds of northern Syria, the most effective fighting force against ISIS.

All in all, neither choice is admirable and won’t lead to a peaceful and prosperous future in Turkey. However, the former is clearly superior to the latter.