President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has previously said, “Let’s assume I will have one or two deputies. The president - me or somebody else - will have one or two deputies. When the president is abroad, then one of the two or the only one deputy will be the acting president.”
“The organization has been able to have legal arrangements done by the political authority.” This is a sentence from the indictment into the Fethullahist Terrorist Organization (FETÖ), written by the Ankara Chief Prosecutor’s Office.
As happens before every election and referendum, a question I frequently come across is about whether the vote will be rigged. Each time I have the same answer: If you guard the voting station, nobody can cheat.
A former Turkish judge at the European Court of Human Rights, Rıza Türmen, wrote a piece titled “A 10-question guide to evaluate the constitution,” for the news website t24.com.tr, where he refers to a distinction German jurist Carl Schmitt has made between constitutions as “resilient to dictatorships and non-resilient to dictatorships.”
Prime Minister Binali Yıldırım gave this answer when his opinion was asked on the dismissal of academics such as Professor İbrahim Kaboğlu whose only “political fault” was being a democrat, as well as journalist Ahmet Şık, who was imprisoned in the past by Fethullahist Terrorist Organization (FETÖ) judges and who is now arrested on charges of being a member of FETÖ:
“Those who are against the presidential system are wrong and unfortunately lying,” President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has said.
It is often said we are a society with a short-memory. This is not totally wrong. Still, though we may all be forgetful we can always check facts in the archives.
President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said the referendum will be a response to the July 15 coup attempt.
President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan answered criticisms suggesting that constitutional changes would “weaken the power of the parliament.”
