Though the amendments passed by 58 percent, 42 percent of Turks, over thirty-two million people [bold mine-DL], said no to the AKP. ~Soner Cagaptay

Suffice it to say that there is nothing that the AKP could do that would not horrify Cagaptay, who has been faithfully fanning Western fears about the dangers of Erdogan and his party for the last several years. It’s also worth noting that Cagaptay has made a significant error in describing the extent of opposition to the constitutional referendum. If you took the total population of Turkey (approx. 74 million) and multiplied it by .42, you would get a figure closer to 31 million, but of course it doesn’t work this way in elections. 159 million people didn’t “say yes” to Obama when he won 52% of the vote. In the actual voting in Turkey, just 15.8 million Turks voted no, which means that 30% of registered voters voted against the amendments, another 41% supported them, and the remaining 29% couldn’t be bothered to show up. Put another way, just 21% of the total Turkish population opposed these measures, which doesn’t sound nearly as impressive as Cagaptay’s false and misleading “thirty-two million people.”