Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu claimed on Wednesday that the plans to switch from a parliamentary to a presidential system would not turn Turkey into a "dictatorship" under President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
Erdogan has steered the country from being largely secular to being ever increasingly Islamist , a point Russian President Vladimir Putin recently noted in vowing not to reconcile over Ankara's shooting down a Russian jet on the Syrian border.
Turkey has also increasingly cracked down on the press, on social media by shuttering Twitter and Facebook at several junctures, and even cracking down on criticism of its leader, with a doctor recently facing jailtime for comparing Erdogan to Gollum from The Lord of the Rings movies.