Erdogan's New Powers Do Little to Address Turkey's Old Problems
- The vote won’t likely fix ailing economy or reduce terrorism
- Taking the “victory as a mandate to reject European values”
Outside of the AKP party headquarters in Istanbul, Turkey, on April 16, 2017.
Photographer: Kostas Tsironis/BloombergFollowing a narrow victory in an April 16 referendum on expanding his powers, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan greeted supporters with a fiery speech aimed at critics abroad who questioned the validity of the results. “We don’t care about the opinions of any Hans, George, or Helga,” Erdogan told an ebullient crowd at Bestepe, his sumptuous presidential palace in Ankara four times the size of Versailles. “All debates about the referendum are now over.”
In the campaign, Erdogan had said approval of the plan to amend 18 articles of the constitution would give him the clout needed to put the ailing economy back on track and tackle an array of diplomatic challenges. Yet the result is likely to aggravate those concerns by scaring away foreign investors and complicating relations with Europe, says Omer Taspinar, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington. “He has to realize that this path will lead to economic ruin sooner or later,” Taspinar says. “The new constitution won’t really change much in terms of Erdogan’s ability to tackle these problems.”