On Sun­day evening in Ankara, Turk­ish Prime Min­is­ter Bi­nali Yildirim stood on the bal­cony at the head­quar­ters of his Jus­tice and De­vel­op­ment Party, or AKP, and hailed an elec­tion vic­tory that will put him out of a job.

The “Yes” camp in Turkey’s ref­er­en­dum, led by Yildirim’s boss, Pres­i­dent Re­cep Tayyip Er­do­gan, ap­peared to win a slen­der vic­tory over the “No” vote, get­ting about 51 per­cent of the vote. Turks ap­proved con­sti­tu­tional amend­ments that would scrap the coun­try’s par­lia­men­tary sys­tem, in­clud­ing the of­fice of the prime min­is­ter, in fa­vor of a pres­i­dency with ex­panded pow­ers.

“There is no loser in this ref­er­en­dum, but only one win­ner: Turkey and its no­ble Turk­ish peo­ple,” said Yildirim.

But the tiny mar­gin of vic­tory and the howls of protests from the op­po­si­tion tell a dif­fer­ent story. Two main op­po­si­tion par­ties re­fused to con­cede de­feat, de­mand­ing a re­count af­ter se­ri­ous re­ports of voter fraud emerged. De­spite the many flaws in Turkey’s democ­racy, its re­cent elec­tions have been mostly fair. But that was­n’t the im­pres­sion on Sun­day night, with the op­po­si­tion point­ing to re­ports of fraud­u­lent bal­lots and the er­ratic be­hav­ior of the coun­try’s elec­tion com­mis­sion.

“Up un­til to­day, Turkey’s op­po­si­tion al­ways thought that it lost fair and square,” said Se­lim Sazak, a fel­low at the Delma In­sti­tute. “This, how­ever, is a game-changer.”

Er­do­gan’s crit­ics say the amend­ments will en­trench one-man rule and es­tab­lish a de facto dic­ta­tor­ship. His sup­port­ers ar­gue that given Turkey’s his­tory of coups — in­clud­ing a de­feated at­tempt last July — civil strife and failed coali­tion pol­i­tics, a stronger ex­ec­u­tive is needed. When the new sys­tem takes ef­fect at the next elec­tions, ex­pected in 2019, it will mark the biggest change in Turk­ish pol­i­tics since the emer­gence of the mod­ern re­pub­lic af­ter World War I.

So, what now? Be­low we pre­sent a sur­vey of re­ac­tion from Turkey-fo­cused an­a­lysts. The nar­row­ness of Er­do­gan’s vic­tory can be in­ter­preted as some­thing of a blow to the Turk­ish pres­i­dent, with a once-frac­tured op­po­si­tion co­a­lesc­ing now against him. On Sun­day night, in neigh­bor­hoods through­out Is­tan­bul, pro­test­ers banged on pots and pans to reg­is­ter their dis­gust with the vote. Er­do­gan may have claimed a win, but he can­not claim the un­var­nished tri­umph he hoped for.

 

#TurkeyReferendum: Some 47.5 million voters cast their ballots – 51.37% of whom voted in favour of the constitution changes. #TurkeysChoicepic.twitter.com/jkOODIeX6N

— TRT World (@trtworld) 16 April 2017

Ziya Meral, a res­i­dent fel­low at the Cen­tre for His­tor­i­cal Analy­sis and Con­flict Re­search in Britain, warned of the un­cer­tainty to come:

“Both the close mar­gins and dis­puted votes will taint Er­do­gan’s sense of vic­tory and ease of han­dling the process to fol­low. This strength­ens the Turk­ish op­po­si­tion but also would mean in­ter­na­tional ac­tors will be more vo­cal about ask­ing for some of the pro­posed changes not to go ahead.

That can be seen in the Coun­cil of Eu­rope’s state­ment al­ready ask­ing for the in­de­pen­dence of the ju­di­ciary to be re­spected. The next phase will be so­cially and po­lit­i­cally in­tense, with protests and harsh po­lit­i­cal polemics.”

Ragip Soylu, the Wash­ing­ton cor­re­spon­dent for Turkey’s Sabah news­pa­per — which is de­cid­edly pro-Er­do­gan — said the “Yes” vote was a re­ac­tion to years of tur­moil that in­cluded the re­sump­tion of a vi­o­lent Kur­dish in­sur­gency, a wave of Is­lamic State ter­ror at­tacks and last year’s failed coup at­tempt:

“I think the in­ter­na­tional me­dia have fo­cused more on Er­do­gan’s per­son­al­ity and less on so­cial po­lar­iza­tion, and what Turk­ish peo­ple have gone through for the last four years. Con­sid­er­ing all of these prob­lems, crises and hard­ships, the ma­jor­ity of the vot­ers chose sta­bil­ity, and a sys­tem that pro­vides more con­trol and pow­ers to Turk­ish gov­ern­ment that can be in­flu­en­tial to pre­vent fur­ther set­backs. The new sys­tem also cre­ates a stronger pres­i­dency that can swiftly act against the cri­sis.”

Howard Eis­sen­stat, an as­so­ci­ate pro­fes­sor at St. Lawrence Uni­ver­sity and a fel­low at the Pro­ject on Mid­dle East Democ­racy, ar­gued that the pow­ers-that-be in Ankara should be chas­tened by the “no” cam­p’s abil­ity to force a stun­ningly close re­sult de­spite the full weight of the state work­ing against them. But Er­do­gan may not hear the warn­ing:

“Given the sup­pres­sion of the ‘no’ cam­paign, the fact that much of the [pro-Kur­dish] Peo­ples’ De­mo­c­ra­tic Party (HDP) lead­er­ship is in jail, and that the gov­ern­men­t’s ef­fec­tive con­trol of the me­dia en­sured a mas­sive im­bal­ance in cam­paign cov­er­age, the ‘no’ cam­paign did very well. For Er­do­gan, a nar­row win is still a win.

He is un­likely to ei­ther slow his con­sol­i­da­tion of power or reach out in mean­ing­ful ways to the op­po­si­tion. He promised a ‘yes’ vote would re­sult in more sta­bil­ity and a re­turn of eco­nomic growth. I sus­pect that nei­ther of these things is true.”

Omer Taspinar, a se­nior fel­low at the Brook­ings In­sti­tu­tion, pointed to the sig­nif­i­cance of the “Yes” cam­p’s de­feat in Turkey’s three biggest cities — in­clud­ing Is­tan­bul, where Er­do­gan was once mayor:

“The fact that Er­do­gan failed to win Is­tan­bul for the first time since 1994 is par­tic­u­larly im­por­tant sign that even some of the ur­ban­ized AKP sup­port­ers have de­serted him. The re­sult also shows that a united front against Er­do­gan has a chance of pro­vid­ing an al­ter­na­tive. The di­vi­sion of the op­po­si­tion par­ties is a ma­jor li­a­bil­ity for Turk­ish democ­racy. A gal­va­nized op­po­si­tion should start by seek­ing unity.”
Aykan Erdemir, a se­nior fel­low at the Foun­da­tion for De­fense of Democ­ra­cies, sees hope for a new plu­ral­ist op­po­si­tion to Er­do­gan:

“This is a ref­er­en­dum where we had Kur­dish vot­ers in the east vot­ing along the same lines as sec­u­lar Turks in the west. It might be the be­gin­ning of a new era. There’s the po­ten­tial for some­thing more than a tac­ti­cal al­liance, but it re­quires vi­sion­ary lead­er­ship. The num­bers are there, the en­ergy is there. Whether some­one can tap into that is the mil­lion dol­lar ques­tion.”

Gonul Tol, the di­rec­tor of the Mid­dle East In­sti­tute’s Cen­ter for Turk­ish Stud­ies, be­lieves Er­do­gan may have to take a more mod­er­ate tack — and per­haps re­sume the peace process with Kur­dish sep­a­ratists:

“To­day’s re­sult means he lost ground among his own con­stituency and could not mo­bi­lize the na­tion­al­ists as much as he wanted to. All this re­quires a dif­fer­ent tone for the up­com­ing pres­i­den­tial elec­tions in 2019. He has to ap­peal to the cen­ter, take ma­jor steps to ad­dress the down­ward turn in Turk­ish econ­omy. In this con­text, a re­turn to the ne­go­ti­a­tions with the Kurds has a bet­ter chance than it would have if he won a land­slide vic­tory, es­pe­cially given that he fared bet­ter than ex­pected among the Kur­dish elec­torate.”

Soner Ca­gap­tay, a Turkey ex­pert at the Wash­ing­ton In­sti­tute for Near East Pol­icy and au­thor of a new book on Er­do­gan, sug­gests Er­do­gan’s ra­zor-thin vic­tory is a good thing rather than a recipe for pro­longed po­lit­i­cal chaos:

“I think it’s ac­tu­ally the ‘best’ out­come. If Er­do­gan had lost, this would have un­leashed a pe­riod of in­sta­bil­ity as he would have gone for a re­run of the vote as many an­a­lysts pre­dicted he would, and if he had won with a wide mar­gin, he would ‘gone off the charts,’ be­com­ing com­pletely au­thor­i­tar­ian. Now, his wings have been clipped and he has been hum­bled.”