Prizewinning photo of young girl hurt during clashes between riot-police and prostestors after the funeral of Berkin Elvan, 15-yr.old boy by Bulent Kilic/AFP. Flickr/Jordi Bernabeu Farrus. Some rights reserved.For all the hype surrounding it, the outcome of the 16 April constitutional referendum in Turkey was, ‘officially speaking’, a foregone conclusion. Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, overbearing president of the republic and the architect of the draconian draft that has been presented to the people, had made it clear that he would accept no expression of the “national will” that did not favour his political fortunes already in the aftermath of the June 2015 national elections when the ruling AKP lost its parliamentary majority.
Aided and abetted by a trigger-happy PKK, he embarked on a ferocious war in the predominantly Kurdish southeast, and shifted to a policy of open confrontation with the Daesh, thereby whipping up the security concerns of the electorate which granted him the majority he yearned for in the November 2015 snap elections.
This time he did not take any chances. In any case, he did not need to. Turkey had long become his personal domain, under the ostensibly watchful eyes of western governments who simply conveyed their “concerns” over countless breaches of human rights (while rubbing shoulders with him to thwart the flow of refugees) and an ever-growing industry of “Turkey experts” who were busy promoting their careers by filling pages upon pages on an apparently never-ending “slide into” authoritarianism. It is thus not surprising that the referendum took place “on an unlevel playing field”.
