Turkish vote on death penalty would 'break with European values'

It was a reflection of the president's narrow mandate and the fact that he lost the vote in the three biggest cities, Istanbul, İzmir and Ankara.

With 99.97% of ballots counted, the Yes campaign had won 51.41% of the votes cast, while No had taken 48.59%.

Erdogan supporters cheered his narrow victory. Turkey's main opposition party quickly contested the result of the vote, claiming that up to 2.5 million ballots were invalid and that some election monitors had been removed from polling stations.

The vote was held under a state of emergency that's been in place since just after a failed coup last July, and which Turkey's security council will meet tonight to consider extending.

"Our monitoring showed the "Yes" campaign dominated the media coverage and this, along with restrictions on the media, the arrests of journalists and the closure of media outlets, reduced voters' access to a plurality of views", Tana de Zulueta, head of the Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights within OSCE, said in a statement. After serving as prime minister for almost a decade, he took over as president in 2014 and through force of personality turned a largely ceremonial role into a de facto head of government.

Global observers from the Council of Europe and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) are due to give their preliminary findings on the referendum later Monday.

A victory for Turkey's President in a referendum on Sunday triggered a modest rally in the Turkish lira yesterday.

In March the Venice Commission, a panel of legal experts at the Council of Europe, said the proposed changes to the constitution on which Turks voted, namely boosting Erdogan's power, represented a "dangerous step backwards" for democracy.

However, this did not satisfy participants of the "No" campaign, with CHP head Kemal Kilicdaroglu saying that they would demand a recount of up to 60 percent of the votes.

The High Electoral Board in Turkey made a late decision on the night of the referendum to count ballots that had not been stamped by officials, which observers said undermined important safeguards against fraud.

Opposition supporters took to the streets of Istanbul to bang pots and pans, a traditional form of protest, in a series of noisy demonstrations. Critics say there's also a loophole in the new laws that could allow Erdogan to run for a third term.

The current president of the European Parliament, Antonio Tajani, tweeted on Monday that he was "very concerned" by the possibility of a referendum on reintroducing the death penalty.

The final results are set to be announced within 11-12 days after the vote, RIA Novosti reported. Macron, battling to hang on to his advantage before the first round of France's presidential election on Sunday, said he sees little chance of Turkey's candidacy succeeding in any case.

Turkish Deputy Prime Minister Mehmet Simsek told Reuters on Monday he expected the "noise" between Ankara and Europe should die down after the European elections cycle.