ANKARA, Turkey \u2014 In a half-destroyed temple overlooking the Turkish capital, there is a carved inscription of a text known as \u201cThe Deeds of the Divine Augustus.\u201d It is the most complete surviving version of the funerary inscription of the first Roman emperor, Augustus. Following its hagiographic accounts of wars won, gladiatorial spectacles commissioned, and money showered upon the populace, it concludes with a line that would later be echoed by the founder of the Turkish Republic, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk: Augustus, it says, was considered by the people of Rome as the \u201cfather of the country.\u201d Two millennia after Augustus, the conspiracies and political machinations of ancient Rome have nothing on modern Turkey. Today, the debate revolves around whether its current ruler, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, is echoing Augustus once again \u2014 this time by gutting the country\u2019s democratic institutions and concentrating all power in his own hands. On April 16, Turks will vote in a referendum over a package of constitutional amendments meant to concentrate more power in the office of the presidency, the position currently held by Erdogan.<\/p>\n
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The vote serves as a stand-in for the country\u2019s views on Erdogan\u2019s 14 years of rule. The rest of the world, meanwhile, is staging its own informal referendum on Erdogan. Over three days of meetings last week in Ankara, government officials defended the amendments as commonsense measures to ensure administrative stability and reform an undemocratic constitution devised by the country\u2019s former military dictators. The opposition leaders spearheading the \u201cno\u201d campaign in the referendum, meanwhile, warned that the country was sliding into authoritarianism \u2014 in some cases, comparing Erdogan\u2019s style of governance to dictators like Saddam Hussein. It\u2019s too soon to predict whether Erdogan will win the upcoming referendum, but his government is already proving incapable of making its case to the West. The referendum has already sparked a new rift between Turkey and several European states. Both Germany and the Netherlands, which are both approaching their own elections amid rising anti-immigrant sentiment, recently banned demonstrations by Turkish officials seeking to drum up the \u201cyes\u201d vote among expatriate Turks. Erdogan responded by accusing both countries of NazismErdogan responded by accusing both countries of Nazism, warning that the Netherlands will \u201cpay the price\u201d for its decision. The spat with Germany and the Netherlands is just one example. On a range of issues \u2014 from the state of Turkey\u2019s democracy to the Turkish role in Syria to Turkey\u2019s extradition request for the U.S.-based cleric Fethullah Gulen, whom it accuses of planning last summer\u2019s coup attempt \u2014 Western countries have refused to adopt Ankara\u2019s views. Ankara is partially responsible for its own alienation. Consider last week\u2019s trip to Turkey organized for more than a dozen American journalists from outlets such as the New York Times<\/em>, Washington Post<\/em>, and Wall Street Journal<\/em> by Ankara Mayor Melih Gokcek. The event was billed as a chance to meet with the country\u2019s top officials, including President Erdogan, to hear their narrative of the coup attempt and why the United States should extradite Gulen. The meetings, however, failed to materialize, and reporters were treated to a four-hour meeting with Gokcek himself. The majority of reporters left the meeting in protest. During the talk, Gokcek failed to present a single piece of evidence implicating Gulen in the coup and instead laid out his own conspiratorial worldview. \u201cA recent earthquake in the gulf [off Turkey\u2019s western coast] was triggered by the United States and Israel with a ship.\u2026 With a little bit of energy, they tried to trigger the fault line,\u201d Gokcek said. The Ankara mayor, a member of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), has warned before that foreign and domestic enemies were causing earthquakes in Turkey. He also mused that Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton had founded the Islamic State, citing the statements of U.S.<\/p>\n President Donald Trump as corroboration. \u201cI investigate a lot,\u201d he said, when asked for further evidence. \u201cI have the largest intelligence service in the world. You know what it is? Google.\u201d Other officials made the government\u2019s case more successfully. Several argued for a \u201cyes\u201d vote by pointing to the instability of governing coalitions \u2014 the republic has had 65 governments in its 94-year history \u2014 as a key factor in blocking much-needed reforms and empowering a cadre of unelected bureaucrats and army officers. \u201cI genuinely believe that the current system is not sustainable.\u2026 [It] is prone to crises and conflicts,\u201d said Deputy Prime Minister Mehmet Simsek. \u201cI would fully recommend that instead of just focusing on fears and theories about President Erdogan, just look at the text.\u201d\u201cI would fully recommend that instead of just focusing on fears and theories about President Erdogan, just look at the text.\u201d The constitutional amendments would concentrate executive power in the hands of the president, a position that until now has been largely ceremonial. The amendments would give him the power to appoint and fire ministers, as well as design state budgets. The president would be able to serve two five-year terms and, unlike now, continue to serve as the head of a political party. With the changes going into effect in 2019, this would potentially allow Erdogan to stay in power until 2029.<\/p>\n Government officials, however, contend that the package would actually enhance the separation of powers in Turkey by dividing parliament\u2019s existing powers with the office of the presidency. Parliament would maintain the power to approve the president\u2019s budget, ratify international treaties and declarations of war, and overrule a presidential decree through legislation. The legal merits of the constitutional changes aside, government officials also portray a \u201cyes\u201d vote as a victory against their domestic opponents \u2014 most prominently, the supporters of Gulen and the Kurdistan Workers\u2019 Party (PKK), which has waged a decades-long insurgency against the state. \u201cI\u2019m convinced that April 16 may serve as a closure,\u201d Simsek said. \u201cBecause Turkey\u2019s efforts against the religious cult [the Gulenists] are largely done. The cases are at the court; it\u2019s up to the courts to decide. And the PKK, their strategy once they got emboldened with gains in Syria, it backfired, because Turkey is no ordinary country.\u201d But \u201cclosure\u201d is precisely what Turkey\u2019s opposition fears. They think it means they would lose any remaining political influence they have held on to since last summer\u2019s coup attempt, and Erdogan\u2019s subsequent domestic crackdown, by entrenching his position as the country\u2019s preeminent political figure. \u201cWe don\u2019t want one-man rule, which is an authoritarian regime,\u201d Kemal Kilicdaroglu, the leader of the largest opposition party, told Foreign Policy from his office in parliament. \u201cThe authority to enact laws will be given to one man with this draft change, and we find it very dangerous.\u201d\u201cThe authority to enact laws will be given to one man with this draft change, and we find it very dangerous.\u201d Kilicdaroglu, the head of the Republican People\u2019s Party (CHP), is leading the campaign for the \u201cno\u201d vote. But he argues that he is doing so while the playing field is tilted against him. The state of emergency governing Turkey since last summer\u2019s coup attempt has had a chilling effect on public debate, he said, preventing civil society and business associations from expressing their opinion on the referendum for fear of the government. He also contended that the vast majority of Turkey\u2019s media is sympathetic to Erdogan after a crackdown on the press over the past year. Amnesty International recently reported that more than 160 press outlets have been shuttered since the coup attempt and more than 120 journalists are currently imprisoned, making Turkey \u201cthe biggest jailer of journalists in the world.\u201d \u201cThere is no press freedom in Turkey,\u201d Kilicdaroglu said bluntly. Erdogan, he said, had brought the country \u201cto the edge of the abyss.\u201d The second-largest opposition party, the Peoples\u2019 Democratic Party (HDP), has the most reason to fear a post-referendum government crackdown. Thirteen of the pro-Kurdish party\u2019s parliamentarians are currently imprisoned, accused of links to the PKK. The party\u2019s co-leaders, Selahattin Demirtas and Figen Yuksekdag, have both been jailed, and Yuksekdag was stripped from her seat in parliament after being convicted on terrorism charges. Among those arrested was the party\u2019s spokesman, Ayhan Bilgen. At the HDP headquarters in Ankara, Osman Baydemir, a former mayor of the majority-Kurdish city of Diyarbakir, has been thrust into the role. \u201cIf you come here next month, I\u2019m not sure who you will meet as a party speaker. I hope Ayhan Bilgen gets out of jail.\u2026 But it looks like, unfortunately, I will go to prison, too,\u201d Baydemir said. \u201cThis is actually Figen Yuksekdag\u2019s room we are using now. I\u2019m pretty sure that in just this hour, at just this time, [Turkey\u2019s security services] are listening to this room.\u201d However the referendum turns out, the war between Erdogan and his domestic and international foes only seems poised to escalate. As Turkey\u2019s president accuses his antagonists in Europe of Nazism, his political enemies at home are only too happy to throw equally bombastic accusations back at him. \u201cErdogan\u2019s political style looks like Saddam Hussein\u2019s or Bashar al-Assad\u2019s style,\u201d Baydemir said. \u201cThey want to make a one-party state \u2014 this is like the example of North Korea.\u201d ADEM ALTAN\/AFP\/Getty Images<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" An upcoming referendum and a vicious war of words with Europe could end up making Erdogan more powerful \u2014 and isolated \u2014 than ever. By david.kenner ANKARA, Turkey \u2014 In a half-destroyed temple overlooking the Turkish capital, there is a carved inscription of a text known as \u201cThe Deeds of the Divine Augustus.\u201d It is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":83,"featured_media":84480,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[89],"tags":[10157,1018],"class_list":["post-176676","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-turkey","tag-demokrasi","tag-recep-tayyip-erdogan"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176676","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/83"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=176676"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176676\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/84480"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=176676"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=176676"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=176676"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}