Alwaght- The US President congratulated his Turkish counterpart on his narrow victory in a historic referendum on presidential powers.
Donald Trump called Monday Recep Tayyip Erdogan after the Turkish presidents ‘Yes’ campaign won over 51 percent of the votes during Sunday’s referendum.
The reforms will change Turkey’s parliamentary system into a presidential one; the office of the prime minister will be abolished; the president will appoint the cabinet and an undefined number of vice-presidents, the president will be given the authority to dissolve parliament, declare states of emergency, issue decrees, appoint half of the members in the country’s highest judicial body and will be able to select and remove senior civil servants without parliamentary approval.
The changes would also potentially keep Erdogan in power until 2029.
The American president’s congratulatory tone appears to run counter to an earlier statement by the US State Department, asserting that the referendum took place in an environment where “fundamental freedoms essential to a genuinely democratic process were curtailed.”
Apart from congratulating, thanking and voicing support for Erdogan, Trump also talked about his recent missile attack against the Syrian government.
He made the call to "congratulate him on his recent referendum victory and to discuss the United States’ action in response to the Syrian regime’s use of chemical weapons," according to a What House release.
Two US Navy destroyers fired 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles from the Mediterranean Sea at Syria’s al-Shayrat airfield late on April 7 in retaliation for a suspected chemical attack that Washington blamed on Syrian fighter jets operating from the base.
Syria has denied carrying out the attack, maintaining that it was a false-flag one to criminalize Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
