Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan gives a speech during an event to close the electoral campaign in Sariyer, near Istanbul, Turkey, 15 April 2017. Michael Kappeler/Press Agency. All rights reserved.Citizens of Turkey are about to vote in a referendum to decide whether to abandon the country’s parliamentary regime for an exceptionally powerful executive presidency. Constitutional amendments in question would grant the president complete power to rule with impunity over the executive and the budget, and a considerable authority over the judiciary, while relegating the parliament to a shadow of its former self with minimal power of scrutiny.
On paper, this is probably ‘the most radical political change since the modern republic’s foundation in 1923’ and ‘the culmination of a steady drift towards authoritarianism in Turkey which began a decade ago.
However, from a strictly practical perspective, it is possible to argue that there is hardly any point in the coming Turkish referendum to be held on April 16, 2017. Despite all the hype within the ‘yes’ and ‘no’ camps, both of which consider it as the most important vote ever to be cast in the country’s history, one tends to miss that the referendum cannot yield a major change in practical terms regardless of what the actual result may be. The referendum cannot yield a major change in practical terms regardless of what the actual result may be.
