Turkey is on the bring of approving major constitutional changes which are being promoted as a key step necessary if the country is to meet demands for more democratic rule set by the EU.

But critics have warned that it will pave the way for Turkey to become an Islamic state.

The reforms, expected to be adopted after a referendum on Sunday, will alter the constitution, originally introduced after a military coup in 1980, to enshrine the elected government's control over the military and the judiciary.
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Turkey set to approve major reforms
Turkey is on the brink of approving major constitutional reforms which critics say will pave the way for the key western ally to become an Islamic state.

By Justin Vela in Istanbul
09 Sep 2010, Telegraph

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/turkey/7991855/Turkey-set-to-approve-major-reforms.html

Opinion polls suggest the reforms, proposed by the Islamic-oriented government, will win narrow approval in a referendum on Sunday.

They will alter the constitution, originally introduced after a military coup in 1980, to enshrine the elected government's control over the military and the judiciary.

They are being promoted as a key step necessary if the country is to meet the demands for more democratic rule set by the European Union as conditions for a future Turkish bid for membership. But critics who support the secular separation of Islam and the state - followed since the collapse of the Ottoman empire in the First World War - say it will be a major step towards an Islamic state.

"The honest people of this country do not allow this," the opposition leader, Kemal Kilicdaroglu, said at a campaign rally. "Those in favor of democracy do not allow this, but the deaf officials of the European Union say, 'What a good thing it is you're doing'."

Since the election of the Justice and Development Party (AKP), and its charismatic prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the country has moved closer to its muslim neighbours, including Iran, and away from a staunchly secular outlook that has played a major role in maintaining the country's position as a member of NATO and a key western ally in the muslim world.

According to the polling organisation Pollmark, the yes vote has 54.9 per cent support. Just as important, a vote in favour will strengthen Mr Erdogan's position in advance of an election next year. If the AKP wins again, he has indicated he will introduce wholesale constitutional changes. Mr Erdogan insists that the new constitution is intended to end the vestiges of Turkey's former military dictatorship.

The amendments have EU backing and the AKP's chief EU negotiator, Egemen Bagis, has also said it is vital for further negotiations on Turkey's long-sought membership. He said he questioned "the mental health and patriotism of anyone intending to vote against".

But opponents say the plans are an attempt by the AKP to give themselves more power over institutions that have until now acted as a brake on their ability to implement their Islamist agenda.

"If you have a yes the government and Erdogan will move a step forward towards changing Turkey towards an autocracy," said Yusuf Kanli, a columnist for local newspaper Hurriyet Daily News and prominent secularist.

"There will be no separations of powers. What we have to focus on is the autocratic spiral that they are introducing step by step."

Turkey: Referendum Encourages Polarization
by Nicholas Birch
10 Sep 2010
Eurasianet.org

http://www.eurasianet.org/node/61909

Turkish voters on September 12 will cast ballots on a constitutional referendum that has encouraged the polarization of society, and has taken on the appearance of a vote of confidence in the country's charismatic prime minister.

The referendum falls on the 30th anniversary of the most brutal of the country's three military coups, and the governing Justice and Development Party (AKP) government has cast it as an exorcism of historic demons. "No country has ever managed to join the European Union with a coup constitution", said Egemen Bagis, Chief Negotiator for European Union accession talks, referring to the current charter, pushed through in 1982 by generals. "This is a historic turning point."

Government opponents, meanwhile, see the proposed changes as a ploy by the former Islamist leaders of the AKP to tighten their grip on state institutions.

The majority of the 27 articles that voters will cast a single vote on are uncontroversial, covering issues such as positive discrimination for women, protection of privacy and collective bargaining. The package would also solidify recent legal changes allowing military officers to be tried in civilian courts, and open the way for the leaders of the 1980 coup to be tried.

The controversy stems from proposals that would give the president and parliament a greater say in appointing members of the Constitutional Court and the Supreme Board of Prosecutors and Judges, a state body responsible for appointing, promoting and - if necessary - sacking magistrates.

Turkey's judiciary definitely needs a shake up. A recent study by a leading Istanbul think-tank found nearly three-quarters of judges saw their job as defending the state, with a significant minority deeply skeptical about human rights.

A pillar of Turkey's authoritarian ideology, the judiciary engaged in a highly politicized struggle with the AKP government after 2007, first twisting laws to block its presidential candidate, then coming within a whisker of closing the governing party down for "anti-secular activities."

Yet many Turks who are strongly supportive of a more democratic constitution doubt the proposed changes are the right way to go about reforming it. "The institutions set up [by the 1980 coup leaders] are completely bankrupt, five sizes too small for the Turkey of the 21st century", commented political analyst Soli Ozel. "But this packet merely increases the executive's control over the judiciary, without changing the judiciary's mentality."

The tiny handful of analysts who have not taken sides also question the government's efforts to portray the referendum as a democratic assault on military-imposed authoritarianism. If it were, they ask, why hasn't the government changed other authoritarian relics of the 1982 constitution, such as bodies enabling the executive to appoint university rectors and the board of a media watchdog. Instead, it has packed them with its own supporters.

Notoriously inaccurate in Turkey, opinion polls appear to show "no" votes closing quickly on "yes" votes. Two surveys done in the last week by A&G Research, widely considered the country's most trustworthy pollster, show 51 percent for and 49 percent against, with roughly one in 12 voters still undecided.

Speaking on television on September 9, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan admitted the referendum was likely to be a close call. "It is the result which is important, not the percentages," he said.

A&G director Adil Gur thinks Mr Erdogan is partially to blame for the apparent slip in support: "If he had ... concentrated on the contents of the package, he would have done better. But he preferred to roll up his sleeves and deepen existing divisions."

Since campaigning began in early August, all sides have conducted campaigns distinguished by virulent partisanship. On 18 August, for example, Mr. Erdogan publicly berated Turkey's most powerful business lobby for failing to declare its position on the referendum. "Those who are impartial will be eliminated," he said, using a famous slogan from the 1970s, when thousands of young Turks died in street clashes that culminated in military intervention. On September 7, he told the private television channel NTV that those who vote no "are coup supporters."

Not to be outdone, one Istanbul-based branch of the secular chief opposition party put up posters in late August sarcastically encouraging passers-by to vote "yes" if they wanted "Muslim women to cover up like nuns."

Social divisions are as deep as political divisions. In Izmir, a secular city staunchly opposed to the AKP, locals have begun campaigning to change the name of a street named after a hugely popular pop singer, a local girl, because she declared she would be voting "yes."

Sezen Aksu "has shown herself to be an AKP supporter," Ulug Ilve Yucesoy, a lawyer for the group said September 7.

The referendum increasingly resembles a dry run for general elections due before June 2011, and financial analysts are concerned that a narrow victory for the constitutional package, or a defeat, could encourage the AKP to engage in pork-barrel politics, throwing fiscal restraint to the wind.

A day after one leading liberal columnist commonly quoted in the international press called "no" voters "mentally ill ... half-fossilized bigot[s]," Soli Ozel thinks the most worrying conclusion to be drawn from the referendum is the complete lack, in Turkey, of what he calls "democratic etiquette".

http://www.eurasianet.org/node/61909

Despite the approval of relevant constitutional changes in Turkey; "freedom of expression" and "freedom of religion" was not approved in the modified constitution. The government now can nail anybody expressing freely against the government and anybody who fights for freedom of religion.
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"Today Zionists are running the world; everybody knows that. In the last days of the Ottoman Empire, one of our sultans borrowed money from a Jewish banker and since then they are meddling with our state affairs. Zionists are running the world as well as running Turkey" according to Ozmen, 52, a projection director in the film industry who voted yes.
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But for the Kemalist Thought Association, dedicated to the legacy of modern Turkey's founder, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk [an agent of the Zionists and Britain, who made Turkey a secret colony of Britain & Jews], the reforms represent an assault on values they hold sacrosanct.

"This constitutional change is designed to destroy what Ataturk's revolution brought to this country," says Devrim Yildirim, head of the association's branch in the more secular Kadikoy district. "The judiciary will be besieged, rights and freedoms will be nullified, and it's going to be an authoritarian regime. Europe has gone through this and it's called National Socialism. Do you remember how Hitler changed the constitution in 1933? He opened it up to public approval and he really got the public approval -- but in the end it became Nazism."
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Facing Constitutional Change, Turkish Voters To Offer 'Yes' Or 'No' To Erdogan
September 11, 2010, by Robert Tait
Eurasianet

http://www.eurasianet.org/node/61911

Facing Constitutional Change, Turkish Voters To Offer 'Yes' Or 'No' To Erdogan by Robert Tait ISTANBUL -- It is meant to be about embracing a new era of democratic-civilian rule and breaking with Turkey's bitter legacy of coups and military-dominated government.

But in the working-class Istanbul neighborhood of Kasimpasa, near the banks of the city's landmark Golden Horn, Soner Ozmen had a different take on this weekend's referendum on constitutional change.

"This 'yes' vote is not a vote against the army or a vote against civilians, it's a vote against Zionists," says Ozmen, 52, a projection director in the film industry who intends to back the initiative. "Today Zionists are running the world; everybody knows that. In the last days of the Ottoman Empire, one of our sultans borrowed money from a Jewish banker and since then they are meddling with our state affairs. Zionists are running the world as well as running Turkey."

Shopkeeper Yusuf Nur (left) and projection director Soner Ozmen say they'll vote "yes" on September 12. It might seem an odd view, though not out of keeping with sentiments widely held in quarters like Kasimpasa, the socially conservative neighborhood where Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan grew up.

But it reflects a broader lack of understanding among many Turks about what's at stake when they go to the polls on September 12.

Erdogan's Justice and Development Party (AKP) government -- which has roots in political Islam and has held power for eight years -- has called the referendum in a bid to implement a package it says will make Turkey more democratic, transparent, and modern, as well as enable it to move out of the army's shadow.

Its opponents say the changes are an attempt to increase Erdogan's personal power, reduce judges' independence, and undermine Turkey's secular state.

Many Turks, caught in the middle, say they will vote according to whether or not they like their charismatic prime minister.

In Fatih, a religiously conservative area of Istanbul, three computer-software engineers drinking tea in a sidewalk cafe all say they will vote "yes" despite not understanding the issues.

The reason: Erdogan.

"Erdogan has a self-esteem that makes us feel confident as well," says Fatih Apaydin, 31, citing the prime minister's confident demeanor when meeting President Barack Obama and his famous confrontation with Israeli President Shimon Peres in Davos in 2009. But he adds: "We are educated people and most of our friends have high-school and college diplomas -- yet most of us don't know what we will be voting for."

Cavit Akyaz, 39, a taxi driver, also points to Erdogan -- invoking what he saw as the prime minister's abrasive, authoritarian personality to explain why he will vote "no." "The prime minister is initiating this change in order to save himself," he says. "After this law, someone can come to your house in the middle of the night and arrest you because the prime minister is appointing judges according to his own will."

Such gut reactions belie the complexity of the issues and contrast with the government's protestations of higher motives.

Not Just Erdogan

The proposed reforms foresee a radical shake-up the judiciary, long seen as one of the twin pillars of Turkey's secular political establishment. The number of judges on Turkey's highest court, the Constitutional Court -- which came close to shutting the AKP for anti-secularism in 2008 -- would rise from 11 to 17, with more of them being appointed by the president and parliament, institutions currently controlled by Erdogan's party. The powerful Supreme Board of Judges and Prosecutors would undergo similar change. Senior judiciary officials say the reforms are simply designed to give the government political control over the judiciary. The government counters that they will make the judiciary more representative.

"Constitutional change is a project to make sure Turkey is complying with the standards of the European Union and in a more democratic manner, that's all," says Haydar Ali Yildiz, deputy chairman of the AKP in Istanbul and co-ordinator of the city's Yes campaign. "We are underlining parliamentary democracy and the independence and transparency of the judiciary system."

A "yes" vote would also reduce the status of the armed forces, the traditional guarantors of Turkey's secular state and once considered untouchable.

Serving military officers would be tried in civilian courts in a move intended to show the military's subservience to civilian rule, as demanded by EU membership. The package also paves the way for trying army officers behind a military coup in 1980, whose 30th anniversary coincides with the September 12 referendum. Critics point out that many of the relevant officers are dead, ill, or very old and that the statute of limitations has passed.

The reform proposals come against a backdrop of long-running investigations into alleged plots to topple Erdogan's government that has seen arrests of hundreds of serving and retired military officers, pro-secularist lawyers, writers, academics, and other figures.

That context has heightened opposition suspicions that the AKP is bent on a power grab and the destruction of its political opponents.

The opposition is not placated by other reforms in the package guaranteeing children's rights, positive discrimination for women and collective bargaining for trade unions, which the government cites as evidence of its democratic intent.

Opponents' Challenge

All Turkey's opposition parties are campaigning for a "no" vote, with the pro-Kurdish Peace and Democracy Party (BDP) urging a boycott.

In neighborhoods like Kasimpasa, the AKP is attempting to overcome such resistance and a lack of voter understanding with a blitz of banners and billboard posters urging a "yes" vote. "Vote No" posters are far less numerous.

Nonetheless, opinion surveys show the result hanging in the balance, with alternate polls indicating one or the other side ahead in the past week by a tiny margin.

With the race tightening, the battle is becoming personal -- sometimes viciously so. On Kasimpasa's main street, a few meters from the local AKP headquarters, a poster of Erdogan's main political rival, the head of the main opposition Republican People's Party (CHP), Kemal Kilicdaroglu, has been defaced and an insult scrawled on his forehead.

Meanwhile, views among Turkey's rival religious and secular camps are as polarized as ever.

Strong support for a "yes" vote is coming from the Islamist charity IHH, which was catapulted into the international spotlight in May after it sent an aid flotilla to breach Israel's blockade of Gaza. Eight Turks and one Turkish-American died when Israeli commandos stormed the flotilla's leading vessel, the "Mavi Marmara."

IHH spokesman Salih Bilici Salih Bilici, the charity's spokesman, believes a "yes" vote would give greater rights to religiously observant Turks. These would include freedom to establish religious schools and for women to wear the head scarf -- long seen as a symbol of political Islam -- in government buildings and universities, both previously deemed unconstitutional.

"When the structure of the upper courts change, we believe those changes that are made in terms of head scarves and Imam Hatip schools will not be thrown out by the upper courts," he says. "Hence the will of the people will be reflected better in the legislative, executive, and judiciary."

But for the Kemalist Thought Association, dedicated to the legacy of modern Turkey's founder, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the reforms represent an assault on values they hold sacrosanct.

"This constitutional change is designed to destroy what Ataturk's revolution brought to this country," says Devrim Yildirim, head of the association's branch in the more secular Kadikoy district. "The judiciary will be besieged, rights and freedoms will be nullified, and it's going to be an authoritarian regime. Europe has gone through this and it's called National Socialism. Do you remember how Hitler changed the constitution in 1933? He opened it up to public approval and he really got the public approval -- but in the end it became Nazism."

It may be a far-fetched view. But it is indicative of the chasm at the heart of Turkey's fractured political landscape, where a "yes" vote may not guarantee the AKP's future ability to govern in a comfort zone.

Turkey: With nearly all votes of September 12 referendum counted, some 58 percent of Turks voted in favor of the 26 proposed amendments to the constitution, which would curb the military's power and reshape the judiciary. Turnout was 77 percent. Now the government has much more power. If the government is Islamic then Turkey becomes an Islamic nation, if the government is secular then it becomes a secular nation, if the government is military then Turkey becomes a military nation.