Erdogan, no red lines
20 April 2017 | In the Media
Recep Tayyip Erdogan has had the approval of the Turkish people since Sunday to amend the constitution and turn his country into a presidential republic, where the power of the head of state, in principle symbolic, will be significantly increased.
Javier Albarracín, director of the Socio-Economic Development department of the IEMed and an expert in Turkey, who wrote and spoke about the result of the vote in various media outlets, sees in the victory of the yes in the referendum not so much an approval of the constitutional reforms envisaged in the vote but an explicit support for the figure of Erdogan.
“What Erdogan has achieved with this victory is to institutionalize those actions that he was already carrying out de facto, that is, to meddle absolutely in the executive and legislative powers and persecute anyone who goes against him, both outside as well as inside his party ”, explains Albarracín.
However, the result of the referendum, with a tight 51.4% in favor of the “yes”, suggests that, if the rules of the game had been followed during the campaign, the ‘no’ could have been imposed ”, according to Albarracín. The IEMed expert speaks of sociological and even violent pressure on the “no” campaign, while the “yes”, for example, has received 10 times more media coverage. “90% of the media has sided with Erdogan,” says Albarracín.
However, he insists that “both Turkey’s key role in current global geopolitics and Erdogan’s appreciation by broad sectors of society in Turkey – since coming to power in 2002, Erdogan has tripled the per capita income of the population and has universalized some rights and services such as health and education – make that the Turkish president has no red lines either inside or outside his country, which allows him to say and do anything without consequences “.
Below you can find links to interviews and articles by Javier Albarracín:
“The Turks do not win with the referendum,” an analysis in El Periódico published on April 16, 2017
Interview on Catalunya Ràdio broadcast on April 16, 2017
Live interview on Els Matins on TV3 on April 18, 2017 (min 29:30)