2017 Turkish Referendum: Did Turkey’s “better educated” vote “No”?

Abstract

On April 16, 2017, Turkey hosted a historical referendum which attracted everybody’s attention to the referendum results. The aim of the referendum was to reveal Turkish population’s opinion regarding the proposed constitutional amendments which are supposed to accelerate the shift of the country from parliamentary democracy to presidential autocracy. As the results of referendum carry historical importance, it is important to interrogate the voting behavior of Turkish people in this referendum. This paper investigates the relationship between 2017 Turkish referendum results and higher education level of population. Multiple regression model has been used to find out whether people’s education level affected their votes in the referendum. This article is the first assessment of the plebiscite results by province.

Keywords

• Turkish referendum,higher education,voting behavior,regression analysis

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