Who won (stole) the Kurdish vote?

A razor's edge win for the constitutional amendments may not be President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's best. On the night of the referendum he looked frail and his untouchable army of advisers seemed more frightened than ever. As the OSCE report now makes official, the referendum on presidential powers is probably the most contested and tainted electoral process in recent Turkish history. But more of that, the Justice and Development Party (AKP) and Erdoğan's reputation within and outside these borders is questioned now.

 Turkey's electoral process will be seen as a taximeter that someone manipulates all of a sudden when the counting goes sour. 

This ballot-stuffing and choice to allow non-stamped ballots will be considered like the single-party days of the 1940s that the Justice and Development Party (AKP) regularly mentions as the "dark days" of the Republican People's Party (CHP). On top of that, there is the Kurdish vote. Huge discrepancies, irregularities and intimidations have shadowed the voting process in Kurdish areas. We as journalists were aware of what was going to happen there for weeks. Whispers and rumors were all across Ankara and Istanbul that even though "no" vote could reach more than 50 percent, there would be external intervention, especially in rural places in the southeast. The Free Cause Party (Hüda Par) and Hizbullah were given carte blanche by local officials to swing and sway the vote by convincing certain tribes to boycott. Even with that, Erdoğan should be lucky to get that 51 percent.

Yet, most of the pollsters and experts we talked to on CNN Türk on the referendum night stressed another thing. Kurds in the southeast gave Erdoğan a second chance to sit and talk again. "Erdoğan's final pitch in Kurdish areas last week...