European Concerns in Wake of Turkey's Referendum

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Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey's president, on Sunday secured victory with a narrow 51.5 percent of voters approving plans to turn the country's parliamentary system into a presidential executive, grant him extensive powers and effectively relegate parliament to a junior body.

The main opposition party rejected the result and called for the vote to be annulled.

Results carried by the state-run Anadolu news agency showed the "yes" vote had about 51.3% compared to 48.7% for the "no" vote with almost 99% of the vote counted. Erdogan has also said he may put Turkey's bid to join the European Union to a referendum.

As CBS News correspondent Holly Williams reports, the constitutional changes would weaken Turkey's courts and its lawmakers, and place enormous authority in the hands of just one person: President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The vote would allow him to re-take control of the ruling Justice and Development party (AKP) that he helped to found. Erdogan spent 11 years as Turkey's Prime Minister - and head of the AKP - before becoming the country's first directly-elected president in August 2014 - a supposedly ceremonial role.

Turkey is divided between those who are celebrating a win in a national referendum, and those demanding a recount. Erdogan launched a major crackdown on his opponents in the aftermath of the coup, with thousands of judges and high-ranking security officials dismissed and dozens of politicians and journalists arrested.

The opposition had already complained of an unfair campaign that saw the "Yes" backers swamp the airwaves and use billboards across the country in a saturation advertising campaign.

The chairman of the State Duma's worldwide affairs committee, Leonid Slutsky, believes that the outcome of the Turkish referendum, in which the supporters of the presidential type of government gained the upper hand with a slight majority, will cause no harm to relations of partnership with Russian Federation.

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In Istanbul, hundreds of demonstrators opposed to the amendments marched in a central neighborhood late Sunday, clanging pots and pans. Election board officials have said that they were trying to avoid suppressing votes and that the decision was not unprecedented in Turkey's elections.

After a contentious campaign and back and forth between Ankara and some European nations, those relationships would need to be mended if Turkey is to restart EU ascension talks, while some in Europe believe that ship has sailed.

Mr Aksunger said: "Since this morning, we have determined some 2.5 million problematic votes".

"The legal framework. remained inadequate for the holding of a genuinely democratic referendum", the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) and the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) monitors said in a joint statement.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel said that the German government had noted Turkey's preliminary referendum result and respected Turkish citizens' right to decide on their constitution.

Here's what the numbers say about the vote.

Mr Erdogan, who could now be in power for another decade, initially claimed the result was a victory for both sides, for "the whole 80 million" Turks.

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