 Hello and welcome to NewsClick and to this conversation with Prabir Purkayashta on last Sunday's referendum victory for President Erdogan of Turkey. Prabir, welcome to the program. The narrow victory is expected to give President Erdogan wide-ranging powers and the fear is that this will sort of undermine the Turkish Republic. Can you give us a sense of what is it that Erdogan is planning to implement with this referendum victory? Well, I don't think the issue is what Erdogan is planning to referendum but what's the powers that this referendum has given him and this powers essentially gives it an executive presidency which means President Holz is head of the state and the head of the government which it wasn't earlier. It also allows the president to belong to a political party which again the earlier president was supposed not to be here to sever his relations with the party once he became the president. So you are supposed to be neutral in terms of parties which also is now been taken away. I think the most significant parts of it is apart from being a presidential form of government is also allowed to get the judges he wants. So out of the courts which is about 15 judges, 12 would then be selected by him and the council of ministers of course report only to the president. So this is one part of it. The second part of it is that also he can he has the right to issue presidential decrease and those decrease have in some sense legal powers. So it also cuts down what the constitutional preserve of the parliament is which is to enact laws. So he can issue a decrease which are not in against the laws and those decrease will have the power of the law. So he has therefore expanded the presidential powers to an extent that we can only call it electoral elected dictatorship. And therefore I would say that this referendum is allowing Erdogan to exercise what would be called a constitutional coup. Of course it comes into operation in 2019 when the next elections takes place. But essentially this will undermine whatever the constitutional structure which Turkey had from 1980. And what we are now likely to see is essentially elected dictatorship. The sanctified by a vote of course but nevertheless allowing him to exercise powers far beyond what a presidential form of government also does. So the checks and balances of the system within the executive, the judiciary all this is going to be completely disturbed by what Erdogan's referendum has done. So now the margin of victory is only 2 percent and the vote is yet to be confirmed but a series of opposition parties have sort of put out statements questioning the validity of the referendum itself. Apparently international observers have stated that this was not done under sort of international conditions for a referendum. Can you throw some light on what are the complaints that opposition parties are raising? Well there are three major complaints. Let us take the most immediate one first which is that unstamped ballot papers were accepted by the electoral board which conducted the referendum and unstamped ballot papers to the tune of 1.5 million. This is what the figures that we have have been accepted by the electoral board. The margin of victory is only 1.38 million. So why during the referendum, not even earlier during the referendum the electoral board would have accepted unstamped ballot papers is not clear to anybody. This seems to be a direct violation. The argument is that we are not sure of winning the referendum and therefore this move to accept unstamped ballot papers which also means the possibility of electoral fraud. So this is one argument which is there. The second argument is that the between the yes vote and the no vote. The it was a completely unlevel fielder if you will. So the yes voters of course in the full run of everything they could go anywhere hold meetings. They had the radio, they had the television. So it was also a complete state support for the yes vote while the no voters were not allowed to hold meetings, they did not have access to the radio, television and so on. And do not forget 160 media outlets have been closed in the last one year or so. So Eddogan has already taken out a lot of the media opposition to him. And therefore what you had was a completely situation where the yes voters, Eddogan supporters and the parties which supported him had complete one way access to the electorate while the others did not. So this is the second part and the third and this is also a serious one which is all the 18 amendments which were placed were voted as one block. Now this is very unusual when you have 18 amendments to the constitution. So to say that each of the amendments should have had a yes no sanction, instead of that it was you omnibus yes no vote. This also has been argued is not something which a normal referendum should have been for a constitutional amendment, a set of constitutional amendments. So these are I think three major issues that are there. Turkey is a very critical country both for Europe and Asia. On the one hand it is a member of the OECD, it is a member of NATO, it has been trying for several years to get into the EU. On the other hand in terms of the West Asian conflict, Syria for instance, Turkey is a very critical player, it has the largest number of Syrian refugees. What does all this mean in terms of the future, the Kurdish question for example? Let us first see Turkey's position in the world today. Now Turkey has a position vis-a-vis Europe, has a position vis-a-vis West Asia. It could be a gateway between Europe and Asia if it wanted to. But unfortunately it seems to have been playing a new Ottoman role vis-a-vis West Asia at least in the last 5-6 years that we are seeing, particularly with the Syrian crisis. So instead of being a gateway between Europe and West Asia which is what earlier they were talking about, they seem now to have decided the need to increase their sway over West Asia. And let us not forget the AKP is really Muslim Brotherhood. So this is the Ikhwan in some form and therefore they are wanting to support the Ikhwan, the Muslim Brotherhood in Syria, supporting the insurgents in Syria and lining up with essentially Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the other Gulf monarchies against what they saw as a secular government of Bashar al-Assad. What Eddogan has got himself into in Syria is the one which is going to dominate what we are likely to see. And there what you said is right, the Kurdish issue is a very key one and HDP as you know has been virtually banned in Turkey. Its leaders are in jail, both the co-founders, the co-leaders of the party have been charged with various crimes are in jail for from November onwards, a number of their parliamentarians are in jail. So HDP which is the key party today in the Kurdish areas which is also a large left and secular support inside Turkey is the one which has been under attack. Also under attack and essentially a military attack has been the PKK or the Kurdish area. So the ceasefire which had taken place about few years back, the ceasefire has now disappeared and Turkey is again in a state of civil war in the Kurdish areas. So how will this play out is I think the far more important question that Turkish relation to Europe which are virtually now sundered and what is Turkish relations going to be with NATO. Turkey at the moment is playing a game of keeping relationship with the NATO as well as trying to dicker with Russia. I think this has to be seen which way Eddogan is now going to go. He I think at the moment would like to play both sides that is the way it is. But having enmeshed himself on the Kurdish question in this civil war situation, looking at the Kurdish groups in Syria who are now asking for autonomous region within Syria, a federal government if you will. I think this is going to be the crux of Eddogan's problem how he resolves it because on one side the Kurdish Kurds are being supported by the Americans, other side Syria, Iran, Hezbollah is with the Bashar al-Assad government and the allies of Eddogan were really the ISIS and the al-Qaeda forces and what are called the Free Syrian Army. Now this is the one which how long Eddogan can support already has come out against ISIS in some form, how long he can continue with this alliance and continue the military intervention Syria we will have to see. It does give him the ability to disentangle himself if he wants, but given the Kurdish question and the role Eddogan is playing it is not it is not likely that he is going to make up with the Kurdish PKK or the Kurdish forces. It seems he wants to establish a completely unitarian, majoritarian democracy if you will democracy within courts. Comparisons that are being made between Modi in India and Eddogan in Turkey and do you see this as a bit tenuous or do you see sort of parallels between what's happening in Turkey and what the future holds for in India given that the BJP now has control or will soon have control over the upper house as well. Well let's put it this way there are certain similarities and also certain dissimilarities and both have to be taken into account in terms of political ideological positioning if you will. Both are expressing majoritarian forms of court and court democracy. They believe that if you have the votes if you have the majority then the minorities rights can be taken away and the voice of the majority should be the only voice heard. This is the in some sense the underlying similarity between the what the BJP is and what the AKP and Eddogan are. The difference is that Eddogan has already had an emergency in fact this entire referendum was held under emergency which has been now going on after the military coup that took place and he's already put about 400,000 people put them behind bars at some point or the other. A large number are still behind bars 125,000, 30,000 people have been sacked from government service and school teachers, college teachers and so on. He's closed down as I said early 160 media outlets major journalists are in jail or have been or have really left the country. So you have a situation already where the democracy that the structure of democracy as we know it to be has already been dismantled by Eddogan and this is the constitutional completion of that if you will. I think India is not that simple because India we have from 1947 a democratic structure the constitutional structure which has been built. There are the states which are also powerful there is a federal power power structure if you will and you have also the judgments of the Supreme Court talking about the basic structure of the constitution that you cannot dismantle it just by parliamentary degree. So these are some of the protections we have which will certainly see that it's not very easy to do go the Eddogan way. The democratic structure was relatively weak in Turkey which is allowed Eddogan now to do what he has done. I think that's not going to be so easy in India and I think the basic structure of the Indian democracy with the people who are who have always valued their power not only the power of vote but also the power of expression. I think that is not so easy to overcome the way Eddogan has done it in Turkey. Don't forget India is 1.2 billion people and Turkey is relatively much smaller. So even size in this case does matter politically. Thanks Rebi for sharing your views. Newsclick will be covering these issues in West Asia closely and we hope to get back to you with more such analysis. Thank you for watching Newsclick.