April 16 referendum is on the line and it is possible to read a lot of articles or listen a lot of talks on it. Yes, the number of contents which focus on this upcoming referendum is very high but this doesn't necessarily means ''quantity=quality''. The campaign of ''Yes'' side is filled with lies and populism, both sides have very limited arguments and worthless discussions. When we add up all those things, a process that is hard to tolerate emerges.
If you don't want to deal with those stuff and just want to make a prediction, then only place that you can look up is polls. But polls have recently lost prestige all over the world with the wrong predictions on Brexit and Trump. In particular, the circumstances on polls here in Turkey are even worse. It is a fact that pollsters are not independent and announcing manipulative predictions without even conducting surveys. What it means that, there is no difference between one survey company's ''%58 Yes'' prediction and a regular citizen's saying, ''I think the results end up with %58 No''.
Well, is there anything left to make a prediction? Seems like previous election results are the last and only option. Unchangeable numbers. No ground for speculations. But in this case, following question rises up: does the previous election results present a helpful data for a referendum projection? Answer would be ''No'' for many countries but in Turkey, things are quite different. Political process only works through parties. There are huge limits and restrictions on non-governmental organizations and unions, which actually should be completely independent. Most importantly, most of the citizens that are going to cast their votes, don't have the ability to think freely. With taking all these factors into account, positions of parties will be decisive on this referendum, therefore looking at the previous election results does no harm.
Now, let's start to think about 16 April...The ones who claim that ''No'' is going to win are defending themselves with following arguments: ''I have many friends who voted for AKP in previous elections and they are now saying that they will vote for 'No' '', ''Bahceli has lost his ground in MHP'', ''Saadet is in the No side, so the supporters of National Front will follow them''. I don't know whether they are truly believe these arguments or just console themselves. If their base for these assumptions is the right-wing voters around them, there is a big delusion. It is no different than thinking that protecting the ballot boxes in Cankaya or Kadikoy contributes to the preservation of country's total ballot votes. Furthermore, the ones who defend that claim are actually saying that right-wing voters will be determinative without even realizing it.
What I am saying is that, it is not very wise to make predictions by saying ''If we add up 3 points from here, 5 points from there'' kind of stuff. For a healthier foresight, right thing to do is dividing up the map into pieces. Most beneficial part of doing this is that we will be able to make a rational assumption for tendencies of MHP supporters. If the opposition block of MHP have influence on party's grassroots, a sum of shift is expected from ''Yes'' -which is the position of party rule- to ''No''. The amount of this shift will probably determine the result of referendum.
Estimates on MHP supporters' tendency doomed to be unhealthy as long as they are country-spread. For example, does the prediction of ''%70 of grassroots will vote for 'No' '' take into consideration of the difference between Central Anatolia and coastline? Doubtful. It is much more possible to expect that the supporters of MHP who live in coastline will go for ''No'' but in contrast to that the ones in Central Anatolia will possibly stick with party's official position, Yes. It doesn't anything to do with the current fight between Bahceli and contrarians. The main driving factor for MHP's grassroots in insider regions, which are more likely to vote for AKP as a second option, will be the discussion of ''Who is on the side of Yes or No?'', not the constitutional amendment package. Therefore Erdogan and AKP's approach to keep coming back to this comparison is not a coincidence.
All these things considered, first heavy blow for the ''No'' front arose when we analyze the map by dividing it into pieces. In the rest of the article, I will try to stay optimistic -as a person who is a supporter of No and will vote for No- and use the results of June 7, rather than November 1 as previous data. In the possible estimations of Yes-No, I will always calculate the No with its upper limit. Nevertheless, my final prediction will be a little bit disappointing. Let's get started.
The graphs above show the cities with +100.000 vote for MHP in June 7. With a optimistic and rough estimate, if we take Ankara and Istanbul with %50-50, coastline with %34-66 No and inside regions with %80-%20 Yes, we get 2.403.860 No votes from these 23 cities for June 7. For remaining cities, by splitting the vote share with %60-40 Yes, we get 1.008.994 additional No votes.
For other parties, dividing up to regions method is not necessary. Apart from capitols like Istanbul, Ankara and Izmir, cities that they can get vote are very restricted for CHP and HDP and also their supporters' stance in this referendum is quite clear. In AKP, there may be a group that decides to stay out of Erdogan consolidation but its weight is probably low. If we take the vote share among AKP supporters as %90-10 Yes, then we get 1.886.471 No votes from AKP. This number is quite high but as I said before, I'm trying to stay optimistic, therefore I'm moving on. Let's take ''No'' percentages for CHP and HDP, %97 and %93, respectively. If we count on Saadet's position in ''No'' front, total share of No in ''others'' becomes %70. If we take the turnout in foreign votes as %50 (there are rumours that it is high) and share as %50-50, total figures are as follows:
These figures create the following graph, %48.9 Yes - %51.1 No.
Even though we establish maybe the most desirable scenario for No, maximum percentage that we can reach is %51. With a more reasonable perspective, Yes votes rise up to %52-53. We have 2 million new voters since November 1, but these voters will probably split with a direct proportion to parties' vote share, therefore it won't effect the Yes-No balance. The only way for the ''No'' front to survive is an increase in turnout, which was %84 in June 7 and %85 in November 1 and hope that this extra participation will mostly help their side.
I'm not trying to present a disaster scenario here. If ''No'' wins in April 16, it won't be ''stating the obvious'', as a matter of fact, it will be a huge victory for opposing front. That's what I'm trying to tell.
We hope that this country's citizens will not pull the pin of their own lives. What a country.
Estimates on MHP supporters' tendency doomed to be unhealthy as long as they are country-spread. For example, does the prediction of ''%70 of grassroots will vote for 'No' '' take into consideration of the difference between Central Anatolia and coastline? Doubtful. It is much more possible to expect that the supporters of MHP who live in coastline will go for ''No'' but in contrast to that the ones in Central Anatolia will possibly stick with party's official position, Yes. It doesn't anything to do with the current fight between Bahceli and contrarians. The main driving factor for MHP's grassroots in insider regions, which are more likely to vote for AKP as a second option, will be the discussion of ''Who is on the side of Yes or No?'', not the constitutional amendment package. Therefore Erdogan and AKP's approach to keep coming back to this comparison is not a coincidence.
All these things considered, first heavy blow for the ''No'' front arose when we analyze the map by dividing it into pieces. In the rest of the article, I will try to stay optimistic -as a person who is a supporter of No and will vote for No- and use the results of June 7, rather than November 1 as previous data. In the possible estimations of Yes-No, I will always calculate the No with its upper limit. Nevertheless, my final prediction will be a little bit disappointing. Let's get started.
The graphs above show the cities with +100.000 vote for MHP in June 7. With a optimistic and rough estimate, if we take Ankara and Istanbul with %50-50, coastline with %34-66 No and inside regions with %80-%20 Yes, we get 2.403.860 No votes from these 23 cities for June 7. For remaining cities, by splitting the vote share with %60-40 Yes, we get 1.008.994 additional No votes.
For other parties, dividing up to regions method is not necessary. Apart from capitols like Istanbul, Ankara and Izmir, cities that they can get vote are very restricted for CHP and HDP and also their supporters' stance in this referendum is quite clear. In AKP, there may be a group that decides to stay out of Erdogan consolidation but its weight is probably low. If we take the vote share among AKP supporters as %90-10 Yes, then we get 1.886.471 No votes from AKP. This number is quite high but as I said before, I'm trying to stay optimistic, therefore I'm moving on. Let's take ''No'' percentages for CHP and HDP, %97 and %93, respectively. If we count on Saadet's position in ''No'' front, total share of No in ''others'' becomes %70. If we take the turnout in foreign votes as %50 (there are rumours that it is high) and share as %50-50, total figures are as follows:
These figures create the following graph, %48.9 Yes - %51.1 No.
Even though we establish maybe the most desirable scenario for No, maximum percentage that we can reach is %51. With a more reasonable perspective, Yes votes rise up to %52-53. We have 2 million new voters since November 1, but these voters will probably split with a direct proportion to parties' vote share, therefore it won't effect the Yes-No balance. The only way for the ''No'' front to survive is an increase in turnout, which was %84 in June 7 and %85 in November 1 and hope that this extra participation will mostly help their side.
I'm not trying to present a disaster scenario here. If ''No'' wins in April 16, it won't be ''stating the obvious'', as a matter of fact, it will be a huge victory for opposing front. That's what I'm trying to tell.
We hope that this country's citizens will not pull the pin of their own lives. What a country.
