Pre-election campaigning restrictions that will be announced by the Supreme Electoral Council of Turkey (YSK) and will legally bind all the political parties will not bind President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s “yes” campaign. Erdoğan will be able to use the state’s resources for his campaign. Demonstrations and meetings of groups campaigning for “no”, on the other hand, will be allowed to be banned by governors due to the ongoing state of emergency in Turkey.
Although Erdoğan should stay neutral during the pre-referendum campaigning period according to the constitution, he already started to prepare for holding public demonstrations in 40 cities, as reported in Cumhuriyet.
ERDOĞAN WILL UTILIZE STATE RESOURCES
As the president of the republic, Erdoğan normally has no elections budget as political parties have. However, he announced that he will be campaigning for “yes”, meaning that he will utilize state resources for his campaign. It is expected that Erdoğan will run his campaign in the name of meeting with the public and openings and the budget will be provided from the discretionary funds of the presidency. From this fund, Erdoğan spent 51,5 million TL in April and 109,1 million TL in May before the June election in 2015.
NO RESTRICTIONS FOR THE PRESIDENT
The Supreme Electoral Council will announce the pre-election restrictions that will bind all political parties. According to these restrictions, no propaganda in public or religious buildings, no ceremonies like openings or even groundbreaking ceremonies and no broadcasting about any of these is allowed. However, these restrictions do not bind Erdoğan as the president of the republic, therefore he will not abide by these restrictions. YSK will not be able to restrict Erdoğan’s campaign in any way. The Council stated that it had no authority legally to control the president’s actions, when CHP complained about Erdoğan’s campaign in 2015 elections. On the other hand, any reactions against Erdoğan and Erdoğan’s campaign will be allowed to be restricted and punished.
