Guns, Votes and Clans: How One Corner of Turkey Elevated Erdogan
A journey through villages in the war-torn southeast shows the story of last weekend's vote is anything but simple.
Yenidogan, a village, stands next to the Acalik polling station (unseen) that voted 100 percent to hand more powers to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, in Turkey’s April 16 referendum.
Photographer: Marc Champion/BloombergThis article is for subscribers only.
Just after 10 a.m. on the morning of Turkey’s constitutional referendum, Suat Oztekin arrived with three colleagues to monitor the vote in a remote Kurdish village.
He left, he says, after being refused entry by the village headman, threatened at gunpoint with arrest and punched in the face by a soldier.