Why all this worry if 'Yes' has already won?

Over the past week or so, the main theme of President Tayyip Erdoğan's referendum campaign has transformed from promoting the benefits of the constitutional shift consolidating all executive power in presidential hands to bashing the main opposition Republican People's Party (CHP) leader Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu.

Erdoğan has been saying there are some suspicions about what Kılıçdaroğlu was doing during some hours on the night of the failed military coup on July 15, 2016. He says this shows that the CHP head was in contact with the pro-coup soldiers and "escaped" to a nearby CHP district official's house after coming to an agreement with tanks blocking the roads to Istanbul's Atatürk Airport. He thus "escaped" from the site, instead of climbing on top of tanks as he had vowed to do in the event of a military coup (a kind of Boris Yeltsin metaphor in Turkish politics).

Erdoğan has also said that if he had known Kılıçdaroğlu had been in contact with the pro-coup soldiers, he would not have invited the CHP leader to the Aug. 7, 2016 "national unity" rally against the defeated coup attempt, believed to have been masterminded by the U.S.-based Islamist preacher Fethullah Gülen.

By coincidence, ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Parti) Deputy Chair Hayati Yazıcı and Kurdish problem-focused Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) deputy Ertuğrul Kürkçü were on board the same 21:50 p.m. Turkish Airlines flight from Ankara to Istanbul on the night of the coup attempt. Both have told reporters that they did not see any tanks around the airport, and indeed Yazıcı and Kılıçdaroğlu were sitting next to each other. Yazıcı has also said they all voiced the need to stand against the coup attempt together, after which he himself left the airport to head to the...