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| Turkey’s Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan, accompanied by his deputies Bulent Arinc (not pictured) and Bekir Bozdag (R), speaks during a news conference at Ataturk International Airport in Istanbul in this June 3, 2013 file photo |
Turkeyโs justice minister said on Thursday that any opposition challenge to a referendum that expanded President Tayyip Erdoganโs powers would be rejected by the constitutional court, and Europeโs human rights court had no jurisdiction on the matter.
The main opposition CHP party said on Wednesday it was considering taking its appeal for the referendum to be annulled to Turkeyโs Constitutional Court or the European Court of Human Rights after the countryโs electoral authority rejected challenges by the CHP and two other parties.
โIf the opposition takes the appeal to the Constitutional Court, the court has no other option than to reject it,โ Justice Minister Bekir Bozdag told television news channel A Haber.
โIt can also apply to the ECHR, but it cannot achieve a result there either, because the agreements Turkey signed do not give parties the right to apply.โ
Bozdag also reiterated government criticism of a report by European election observers who said the referendum, carried out under emergency law, took place on an โunlevel playing fieldโ.
The observers said a last-minute decision by election authorities to allow unstamped ballots to be counted โundermined an important safeguard and contradicted the law which explicitly states that such ballots should be considered invalidโ.
Bozdag said the report lacked fairness and objectivity. โThose who prepared this report are partial,โ he said.
Sundayโs referendum narrowly backed the largest overhaul of Turkeyโs political system since the founding of the republic nearly a century ago, giving Erdogan sweeping authority over the NATO member-state.
But the tight result of a highly charged campaign laid bare divisions and triggered challenges from the opposition over its legitimacy.
