International monitors: Turkish referendum not "genuinely democratic"

A team of international monitors has issued its initial report on yesterday's Turkish constitutional referendum, stating that it "took place on an unlevel playing field" as "fundamental freedoms essential to a genuinely democratic process were curtailed." The group, compromised of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe and the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of the Europe, added:

The legal framework remained inadequate for the holding of a genuinely democratic referendum.