Earlier on Wednesday, Turkish Justice Minister Bekir Bozdag said that Turkish opposition was attempting to justify its defeat at Sunday's constitutional referendum by claiming voting violations took place during the vote and appealing to cancel the referendum's results, while Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim stated that as the result of the referendum in Turkey was clear, the opposition should demonstrate responsibility and stop calling on the people to take to the streets to demonstrate their dissatisfaction with the plebiscite's outcome.
Sunday's referendum narrowly backed the largest overhaul of Turkey's political system since the founding of the republic almost a century ago, giving Erdogan sweeping authority over the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation member-state.
The High Electoral Board announced in a written statement its decision by a 10-1 vote to reject three requests by the opposition.
The High Electoral Board said it assessed appeals from the CHP and two other parties at a seven-hour meeting on Wednesday.
Opposition parties had called on the electoral board to annul Sunday's referendum, which was narrowly won by the "Yes" camp, because unstamped ballot papers were included in the vote count.
The head of the electoral commission, Sadi Guven, has also so far defended the decision but said he would evaluate requests to annul the vote. Numerous irregularities were reported in traditional Kurdish strongholds of the HDP long opposed to AK Party rule.
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Until now, Turkey's president was required to remain above party politics, a condition which was removed in one of the referendum's 18 amendments. "We will employ all legal ways available", Tezcan said.
But he said the AKP would not hold a party congress until 2018, indicating Erdogan would not officially become its leader until then.
"The rule of a match can not be changed while the match is still being played, this is a universal rule", he said.
The opposition has complained about an unlevel playing field before the referendum and irregularities during the vote, claims echoed by election monitors from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) and by the European Union. Observers said this decision, made in the afternoon of election day, removed an important safeguard against fraud.
Meanwhile, Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu has said that a critical report by European observers on the referendum contained several mistakes which he believed were deliberate.
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