In response to my post about this Sunday’s constitutional amendment referendum in Turkey, which threatens to eviscerate what remains of the independent judiciary, Aaron Shafer writes in:

. . . The vote is this Sunday,which falls at the end of a 4 and 1/2 day weekend. This would be like having the vote on the Sunday after Thanksgiving. The effect being that a significant amount of voters, and those that would tend to vote “no,” will be out of town. Further, this weekend marks the end of the summer, so many “no” voters are closing out the season at the summer house. Plus, being the end of Ramadan, the AKP just completed 30 consecutive nights of providing free buffet “Iftar” dinners throughout key voting districts. These issues make the vote itself a mockery of democracy.

Indeed.