Turkish police detained at least 80 people who have endorsed a “no” campaign for an upcoming referendum in April that will switch Turkey to an executive presidency, according to Transparency International’s (TI) Turkey branch.
TI Turkey said in a statement on Thursday that it will monitor incidents of rights abuse and unlawful government actions in the run-up to the referendum and share the results with the public in regularly released reports.
In the first of such reports, TI Turkey said over 80 people were detained while campaigning for a “no” vote between Dec. 25 and Jan. 31.
The report underlined that the reason for most of the detentions by Turkish police was recorded as “distributing leaflets against the constitutional amendments.”
The referendum is set to introduce a shift from a parliamentary system to an executive presidency which will give more power to President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. (Turkey Purge)