ANKARA: Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Monday told international monitors to “know your place” after they suggested the landmark referendum giving him extra powers fell short of international standards.
“Know your place first,” Erdogan told the monitors in an address to supporters outside his vast presidential palace in Ankara.
“We neither see, hear, nor know those politically motivated reports that you will draft,” he said after the report by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) and the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) monitors.
“The referendum took place on an unlevel playing field and the two sides of the campaign did not have equal opportunities,” said Cezar Florin Preda of PACE.
The group’s preliminary conclusions were also blasted by the Turkish Foreign Ministry as “biased” and “prejudiced.”
Erdogan said: “We will continue down our road. This country held the most democratic elections that have never been seen in any other country in the West.”
The president also warned the international monitors “not to join a race of casting shadows over the elections”, adding: “You cannot achieve any result.”
The US urged Turkey’s government to protect basic rights and freedoms.
US State Department spokesman Mark Toner pointed to concerns raised by the OSCE, which monitored the referendum. He said there were irregularities both on voting day and during the campaign that led to an “uneven playing field” for the “no” side.
Germany said the close result was a big responsibility for Erdogan to bear and it showed how divided Turkish society was.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel also said that Turkish authorities needed to address concerns about the content and procedure of the referendum raised by a panel of European legal experts.
The French president’s office warned that the referendum on restoring the death penalty would constitute a break with European values.
“The organization of a referendum on the death penalty would obviously be a break with (the) values and engagements” accepted by Turkey when it joined Europe’s top rights watchdog, the Council of Europe, the presidency said.
It was alluding to remarks made by Erdogan on Sunday as the nation voted through controversial constitutional changes granting him greater powers.
The French presidency said it “took note” of the figures and the “disputes” surrounding them, saying they showed “that Turkish society is divided over the proposed deep reforms.”
Earlier, in a brief speech from the airport, Erdogan congratulated cheering supporters for “standing tall” in the face of the “crusader mentality” of the West.
But the opposition immediately cried foul over alleged violations, claiming that a clean vote would have made a difference of several percentage points and handed them victory.
The main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) and the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) said they would challenge the results from most of the ballot boxes due to alleged violations.
“There is only one decision to ease the situation in the context of the law — the Supreme Election Board (YSK) should annul the election,” the Dogan news agency quoted CHP deputy leader Bulent Tezcan as saying.
The opposition was particularly incensed by a decision by the YSK to allow voting papers without official stamps to be counted, which they said opened the way for fraud.
The referendum has no “democratic legitimacy”, HDP spokesman and MP Osman Baydemir told reporters in Ankara.
The opposition had already complained of an unfair campaign that saw the “Yes” backers swamp the airwaves and use up billboards across the country in a saturation advertising campaign.
“Know your place first,” Erdogan told the monitors in an address to supporters outside his vast presidential palace in Ankara.
“We neither see, hear, nor know those politically motivated reports that you will draft,” he said after the report by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) and the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) monitors.
“The referendum took place on an unlevel playing field and the two sides of the campaign did not have equal opportunities,” said Cezar Florin Preda of PACE.
The group’s preliminary conclusions were also blasted by the Turkish Foreign Ministry as “biased” and “prejudiced.”
Erdogan said: “We will continue down our road. This country held the most democratic elections that have never been seen in any other country in the West.”
The president also warned the international monitors “not to join a race of casting shadows over the elections”, adding: “You cannot achieve any result.”
The US urged Turkey’s government to protect basic rights and freedoms.
US State Department spokesman Mark Toner pointed to concerns raised by the OSCE, which monitored the referendum. He said there were irregularities both on voting day and during the campaign that led to an “uneven playing field” for the “no” side.
Germany said the close result was a big responsibility for Erdogan to bear and it showed how divided Turkish society was.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel also said that Turkish authorities needed to address concerns about the content and procedure of the referendum raised by a panel of European legal experts.
The French president’s office warned that the referendum on restoring the death penalty would constitute a break with European values.
“The organization of a referendum on the death penalty would obviously be a break with (the) values and engagements” accepted by Turkey when it joined Europe’s top rights watchdog, the Council of Europe, the presidency said.
It was alluding to remarks made by Erdogan on Sunday as the nation voted through controversial constitutional changes granting him greater powers.
The French presidency said it “took note” of the figures and the “disputes” surrounding them, saying they showed “that Turkish society is divided over the proposed deep reforms.”
Earlier, in a brief speech from the airport, Erdogan congratulated cheering supporters for “standing tall” in the face of the “crusader mentality” of the West.
But the opposition immediately cried foul over alleged violations, claiming that a clean vote would have made a difference of several percentage points and handed them victory.
The main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) and the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) said they would challenge the results from most of the ballot boxes due to alleged violations.
“There is only one decision to ease the situation in the context of the law — the Supreme Election Board (YSK) should annul the election,” the Dogan news agency quoted CHP deputy leader Bulent Tezcan as saying.
The opposition was particularly incensed by a decision by the YSK to allow voting papers without official stamps to be counted, which they said opened the way for fraud.
The referendum has no “democratic legitimacy”, HDP spokesman and MP Osman Baydemir told reporters in Ankara.
The opposition had already complained of an unfair campaign that saw the “Yes” backers swamp the airwaves and use up billboards across the country in a saturation advertising campaign.
