That this referendum enjoyed European support only confirms, in their view, that the liberalization of the Turkish political order required to meet EU accession standards has become inimical to their own political interests and preferences. Why, they wonder, are Western “liberals” so easily enlisted in support of what their Turkish counterparts deem to be an Islamist threat? The Westernized elites of Turkey’s coastal cities - once the strongest bastion of support for Turkey’s EU bid - have lost their enthusiasm for Europe precisely as a result of their pessimistic assessment that European civil rights and political liberties inure to the benefit of the political forces in Turkey that they most despise. Indeed, many commentators suspicious of the AKP’s motives have expressed frustration, exasperation and, at times, contempt for the support garnered by the constitutional amendments in the West. This portrait of international reception of the constitutional amendments hardly comports with claims that the referendum will enable consolidation of Islamist power in Turkey. Once the results were released, President Barack Obama called to congratulate Prime Minister Erdoğan on the outcome. The European Union, which Turkey seeks to join, consistently expressed support for the amendment package and welcomed its passage as another step toward convergence with European standards. The overwhelming effect of these provisions amounts to civilianizing the military coup-era constitution, strengthening individual freedoms and political rights, and undertaking much-needed judicial reform. They include provisions that: empower civilian courts while reducing the jurisdiction of military courts strengthen gender equality and protections for children, the elderly, veterans and the disabled improve privacy rights and access to government records expand collective bargaining rights afford individuals standing to bring constitutional challenges and remove immunities long afforded to those responsible for the 1980 military coup. The 26 constitutional amendments at issue in the referendum would, in most other places, have been warmly welcomed as liberalizing improvements to a flawed constitution. A balanced analysis of the referendum results should reverse the emerging narrative on Turkey and restore a more realistic (and even optimistic) assessment of the country’s trajectory. Accounting for the intense polarization around the referendum by recourse to the well-worn trope of Islamists arrayed against embattled secularists is both simplistic and misguided. Indeed, the referendum coincided with the thirtieth anniversary of that coup and the political polarization that preceded the vote reflected in some measure its still contested legacy. In fact, that package of constitutional amendments chips away at the remaining illiberal provisions of a constitution originally drafted by the military junta that came to power by coup in 1980. Such accounts treat the referendum as a vote of confidence in the government with little attention to the substantive impact of the constitutional amendments that were the subject of the vote. Many analysts interpreted the referendum as the final showdown between the country’s secular establishment and Islamist forces, with the result definitively displacing the former and accelerating Turkey’s alleged turn from the West. Turkey’s September 12 referendum - resulting in the passage of a package of constitutional amendments with support from 58 percent of voters - offers the most recent occasion to revisit this increasingly critical portrait of Turkey in Washington and beyond. Elsewhere, descriptions of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s increasingly assertive policies toward the Middle East are paired with allegations of a more authoritarian style of government by the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP). Commentators worry about creeping Islamization in domestic and foreign policy, a concern captured by pictures of headscarved women accompanying articles about Turkey’s eastward turn. Analysts have warned that Turkish foreign policy is undergoing a reorientation away from the West, ominously foreshadowed by deteriorating relations with Israel. The news reports and commentary on Turkey in the middle months of 2010 have sounded alarmist themes.
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