Turnout: 85.43%
About this election
On 16 April 2017 Turkey held a constitutional referendum on replacing its parliamentary system with an executive presidency. The "Yes" campaign, backed by President Erdoğan's AKP and the nationalist MHP, won narrowly with 51.41% to 48.59% for "No". The result abolished the office of prime minister, concentrated executive power in a directly elected president, and reshaped the relationship between the presidency, parliament and the judiciary. Turnout was 85.43%. The map on this page shows the result in each of the 81 provinces.
The referendum bundled 18 constitutional amendments into a single yes-or-no question. They abolished the post of prime minister and transferred executive authority to the president, who would head the government, appoint ministers and vice-presidents, issue decrees, and play a role in judicial appointments; raised the number of MPs from 550 to 600; aligned presidential and parliamentary terms at five years, to be held on the same day; and lowered the age of eligibility to stand for parliament. The changes would take full effect after the 2018 elections.
The vote was the culmination of Erdoğan's long-held ambition, pursued since at least 2007, to create a presidential system. It was held under the state of emergency imposed after the failed coup attempt of July 2016, during which tens of thousands of people were detained or dismissed from public jobs. Supporters argued an executive presidency would deliver decisive, stable government; opponents warned it removed crucial checks and balances and concentrated power dangerously in one office.
The "Yes" campaign enjoyed overwhelming advantages in state and pro-government media and the backing of the machinery of state under emergency rule, while "No" campaigners reported obstruction and intimidation. International observers from the OSCE and the Council of Europe concluded that the referendum had been conducted on an unlevel playing field. A late decision by the electoral board to accept ballots without the official stamp drew strong objections from the opposition, which alleged it could have affected the close result.
The result split the country along familiar lines, visible on the province map. "No" won in the three largest cities — İstanbul, Ankara and İzmir — and along the western and southern coasts, the heartland of the secular CHP, as well as across the Kurdish-majority south-east, where the HDP's base rejected the change. "Yes" prevailed across the conservative central Anatolian heartland and much of the Black Sea coast, the AKP's strongholds. Of the 81 provinces, "Yes" carried 48 and "No" 33, but the populous metropolitan "No" votes kept the national margin extremely tight.
The "Yes" camp united the AKP and the MHP, whose leader Devlet Bahçeli had endorsed the change. The "No" camp brought together the CHP, the HDP and a dissident faction of nationalists — including the future founder of the Good Party, Meral Akşener — alongside many civil-society groups.
Erdoğan hailed the narrow victory as a historic decision, while the opposition contested the conduct of the vote and the legitimacy of the stamp ruling. The amendments laid the constitutional foundation for the system under which Turkey has been governed since 2018, and the closeness of the result — a bare majority won under emergency rule — left the legitimacy of the new system contested among nearly half the electorate.
The change was the most far-reaching reordering of Turkey's institutions since the founding of the republic in 1923. It ended the parliamentary system that had governed the country, with interruptions, throughout its democratic history, abolishing the office of prime minister held by figures from İsmet İnönü to the AKP's own Ahmet Davutoğlu and Binali Yıldırım. Critics across the political spectrum, and the Council of Europe's Venice Commission, warned that the new arrangement lacked the separation of powers and parliamentary oversight that characterise other presidential democracies, concentrating legislative, executive and judicial influence in a single elected office.
The referendum could not have passed without the nationalist MHP. Its leader Devlet Bahçeli's decision to back an executive presidency split his own party — the dissidents who rejected the change, led by Meral Akşener, would go on to found the Good Party — but it gave the "Yes" camp the additional votes it needed to scrape past 50%. The AKP–MHP partnership forged in the referendum became the People's Alliance that has governed Turkey ever since.
Turnout of 85.43% confirmed the intensity of public engagement in a vote widely understood as the most consequential constitutional decision in a generation, with participation high in both the "Yes"-leaning Anatolian interior and the "No"-leaning cities and coasts. The bare-majority outcome, and the disputes over its conduct, meant the new system began its life with its legitimacy openly contested by nearly half the country.
Supreme Election Council of Turkey (YSK) — ysk.gov.tr.
Compiled and reviewed by Bartłomiej Paruzel, Election Data Analyst, from official results. See our data methodology.