Blessings for everyone, provided he gets more powerWITH just over a week before a referendum on constitutional changes that would give him practically unchecked powers, Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, ought to be coasting to victory. The media have been defanged. Critics, including members of his own party, are afraid to speak up. The secular opposition is tripping over its own shoelaces. Yet Mr Erdogan is not assured of a win on April 16th. Most polls show the “no” and “yes” sides too close to call. The outcome now hinges largely on two groups that have long been at each other’s throats: Kurds and nationalists.
In Diyarbakir, the heart of the Kurdish southeast, battered over the past two years by fighting between insurgents from the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and Turkish security forces, the referendum is not a burning question. “Kurds have no rights in the current constitution, and they have no rights in the new one,” says Sah Ismail Bedirhanoglu, a businessman. “People here lost homes, family members and jobs,” says Vahap Coskun, a professor at Dicle University. “There is no article in this constitution that...Continue reading
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