Epress.am News from Armenia
With a double victory in Sunday’s constitutional referendum, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan is poised to make sweeping changes in his officially secular, but predominantly Muslim country, reports Canada’s The Globe & Mail.
The package of changes was supported by 58 per cent of the 39 million people who voted, paving the way for the government to appoint a large number of high-court judges more in tune with the government’s Islamic tendencies. It also gives Mr. Erdogan’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) a leg up on next year’s national elections.
The AKP ran an impressive campaign, writes Patrick Martin in The Globe. Most aspects of the government’s lengthy set of changes were immensely popular: They reduce the power of military courts over civilians, grant greater protections of human rights, and remove the immunity from prosecution that Turkey’s military coup leaders gave themselves when drafting the constitution in the early 1980s.
The largely secular opposition objected to only two of the 26 points in the package. These two articles will increase the number of judges on the Constitutional Court (the country’s highest court) and give Parliament the largest say in appointing those and other judges.
EU officials have expressed approval of much of the reforms package, reportedly saying it is “a step in the right direction.” But while Europe’s reservations about Turkey’s proposed membership in the EU have largely been concerned with matters of human rights, there are many who say privately they also are worried about an overly Islamized Turkey joining their club. They will be waiting to see just what Mr. Erdogan does with his victory.
“We have crossed a historic threshold toward advanced democracy and the supremacy of law,” Mr. Erdogan said in a nationally televised speech at his party headquarters in Istanbul Sunday night.
“Those who said ‘yes’ and those who said ‘no’ are equally winners because advanced democracy is for everybody,” he said.