President Recep Tayyip Erdogan got the all-powerful presidential system he had been craving for in Turkey's April 16 referendum. Now, with the constitution amended according to his wishes, Erdogan will have full control over the executive, legislative and judicial branches of the government. But the same referendum also deprived Erdogan of the major victory he was hoping for. In fact, it created a major risk for him in the next presidential elections in November 2019.
Why was the referendum not a major victory for Erdogan? Because only 51.4% of the electorate said "yes" to the constitutional amendments that increased the president's powers. Both Erdogan and his supporters, however, were expecting a much higher level of support — around 60%. This was based on the calculation that not just Erdogan's own Justice and Development Party (AKP), but also the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) was campaigning for "yes." (In the latest general elections in November 2015, the AKP had won 49% and the MHP had won 12% — so their total number would exceed 60%.) Moreover, the whole state apparatus was mobilized for the "yes" vote, creating a very unfair propaganda scene at the expense of the "no" camp.
These calculations, however, did not work. Most MHP voters seem to have voted "no" in an implicit rejection of Erdogan's co-optation of their party through his alliance with the party's not-so-popular leader, Devlet Bahceli. Moreover, even some traditional AKP voters seem to have voted "no" this time. As various analysts have pointed out, Erdogan lost a segment of the AKP base in big cities such as Istanbul and Ankara. As voting patterns show, especially some of the more educated and well-off religious conservatives said "no" this time. These "worried conservatives," as they have been dubbed lately, seemed concerned with the latter-day authoritarianism of the government and its disastrous results on the economy.
Moreover, the very nature of the new presidential system made the 51.4% support a very fragile base for Erdogan. In the past, when Turkey had a parliamentary system, Erdogan could easily secure a government with any vote above 40%. That would give his AKP a majority in the parliament, and thus a one-party government. Under the new presidential system, however, Erdogan has to keep winning more than 50% of the votes. And the mere 51.4% he won last month means he is on the knife's edge.
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