Turks yesterday approved divisive constitutional changes to reshape the judiciary and curb the military’s powers, handing the Islamist-rooted government a major political victory.
Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said provisional results showed that some 58 per cent of the voters backed the amendments in the referendum, hailing the outcome as a “turning point” for Turkish democracy.
“We have passed a historic threshold on the way to advanced democracy and the supremacy of law... September 12 will go down in history as a turning point,” he told a crowd of jubilant supporters at his party’s office in Istanbul.
Turnout was between 77 and 78 per cent, he said.
The CNN Turk news channel projected the final result at 57.6 per cent, with official figures expected on Monday.
The outcome is a major boost for Mr Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) before general elections next year, in which the party, the moderate offshoot of a banned Islamist movement, will seek a third straight term in power.
The secularist opposition had campaigned against the amendments, saying they masked an AKP quest to take control of the judiciary and assert an authoritarian grip on power.
The European Union, which Turkey is seeking to join, had welcomed the changes as a “step in the right direction” but expressed reservations over increasing government influence on the judiciary.
In a message of reconciliation, Mr Erdogan refused to take the result as the exclusive success of his party, extending thanks also to supporters of other parties who backed the package and embracing the “no” voters.
“Those who said ‘yes’ and those who said ‘no’ are equally winners because advanced democracy is for everybody,” he said. “The losers are the coup supporters and those resisting change.”
The AKP, he said, would seek a compromise with the opposition for further constitutional reforms.
The referendum fell on the 30th anniversary of the 1980 coup, one of four military interventions that have unseated elected governments in Turkey since 1960, which produced the current Constitution.
Unrest marred voting in some regions where militant groups harassed and stoned fellow Kurds who rejected a boycott call from the main Kurdish party and turned out to vote.
Police used truncheons and tear gas to disperse rioters and detained about 90 people in seven cities, Anatolia news agency reported.
Voters were divided on the AKP agenda, reflecting the sharp polarisation that has plagued Turkey since 2002 when the AKP came to power amid fears it would undermine the secular system.
“We no longer want military coups in this country... We want a civilian and a more democratic Constitution,” said 32-year-old Serkan Misirlioglu, a travel agency employee, as he went to vote under pouring rain in Istanbul.
But housewife Fatma Uretici, a “no” voter, had no trust in Mr Erdogan.
“He is transforming the Constitution as it suits him. He wants to install his men everywhere,” she grumbled.
The opposition argued the AKP – its democratic credentials already under mounting criticism – designed the amendments to propel its cronies to senior judicial posts, control the courts and dilute Turkey’s secular system.
The 26-article package aims to restructure the higher echelons of the judiciary, a secularist bastion at loggerheads with the government.
The most controversial provisions modify the make-up of the Constitutional Court and the Higher Board of Judges and Prosecutors, and the way their members are elected.
The package also curbs the powers of the once-untouchable military, already humbled amid sprawling probes into alleged plans to unseat the AKP that have landed dozens of soldiers in court.