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On April 16th, Turkey will vote on a referendum that, if passed, would dramatically increase the powers of President Recep Tayyip Erdoan.CreditPHOTOGRAPH BY KAYHAN OZER / ANADOLU AGENCY / GETTY

The first time I met Selahattin Demirta, the leader of Turkeys largest Kurdish political party, known as the H.D.P., he arrived at a restaurant in Istanbul with a single assistant accompanying him. Demirta is warm and funny. Among other things, he is anaccomplished playerof the saz, a string instrument that resembles the oud. At the timeit was 2011Demirta was trying to lead his party and people away from a history of confrontation with the countrys central government. It wasnt easy. Like other Kurdish leaders in Turkey, Demirta had spent time in prison and seen many of his comrades killed. I remember him telling me how, in the nineteen-nineties, when civil unrest in the countrys Kurdish areas was hitting its bloody peak, a particular make of cara white Renaulthad been notorious in Kurdish towns. The cars were used by Turkish intelligence officers, who had developed a terrifying reputation for torturing and executing Kurds. Ive been inside the Renaults, Demirta told me. A lot of people I know never made it out of them.

The last time I met Demirta, in September, it was at a tea shop in the trendy neighborhood of Taksim. He was surrounded by bodyguards. Things were going badly for himnot because he had given up on democratic politics but because he had succeeded so well; in 2015, the H.D.P. captured an astounding eighty seats in the Turkish parliament. The Party had even begun to attract non-Kurdish voters. Soon, however, Turkeys President, Recep Tayyip Erdoan, began cracking down on the Kurds. Thousands of members of the H.D.P. were detained. In November, two months after our last meeting, Demirta, who is forty-three years old, was arrested and jailed. Now, facing what appear to be preposterous chargessupporting an armed terrorist organizationhe is facing a prison sentence of as long as a hundred and forty-two years.

If you follow Turkish politics, you know that Demirtas case is not uniquein fact, in the Erdoan era, it is unremarkable. Erdoan, who came to power following nationwide elections in 2002, has spent the past decade doing his best to strangle Turkeys democratic order. It now seems clear that Erdoan, who is sixty-three, intends to arrogate dictatorial powers to himself, have them ratified by a subservient political order, and stay in power for years to come.

This hardly seemed possible as recently as three years ago. In late 2013, Erdoan seemed to be on the ropes, entangled in a corruption scandal that appeared to implicate both him and his son Bilal. (In a series of taped conversations that weremade public, Erdoan could be heard telling Bilal, Eighteen peoples homes are being searched right now with this big corruption operation . . . So Im saying, whatever you have at home, take it out. O.K.? Later, Bilal responded, So theres something like thirty million euros left that we havent been able to liquidate.)

But Erdoan is a master at self-preservation. He beat back his accusers and then, last July, in what must be regarded as a political gift from the heavens, elements inside the Turkish military tried to overthrow his government. Erdoannot without some justificationblamed the attempted coup on the movement of Fethullah Glen, a Muslim preacher who lives in exile in the United States. After successfully putting down the attempted putsch, Erdoan launched a sweeping, and still ongoing, campaign to destroy the countrys democratic opposition. Since July, more than forty thousand people have been arrested, and a hundred thousand government employeesincluding judges, prosecutors, and academicshave been fired. Tens of thousands remain in prison, including more than a hundred and fifty journalists and media workers. The government has closed a hundred and seventy-nine newspapers, television stations, and Web sites. Turkey is now the most prolific jailer of journalists in the world.

That bring us to a constitutional referendum scheduled for next month, and to Demirta. On April 16th, Turkish voters will be asked to approve a series of changes to the constitution that wouldyou guessed itgrant extraordinary powers to the job that Erdoan now holds. On paper, Turkey still has a parliamentary system, with significant powers reserved for the Prime Minister, parliament, and the judiciary. The referendum proposes to radically alter that system, eliminating the position of Prime Minister, drastically curtailing the powers of parliament, scaling back the independence of the judiciary, and vesting sweeping powers in the Presidency. Whats more, the new constitution would give Erdoan the right to run for two more five-year terms, potentially giving him another decade in power.

What the referendum amounts to, essentially, is an attempt to overturn Turkish democracy, and to rubber-stamp the authoritarian powers that Erdoan has been pursuing for the past decade. (You wont hear any criticism of Erdoan from Europe, by the way. Erdoan, having agreed last year to hold back the tide of refugees from the Middle East,hasthe continents political leaders over a barrel.)

Yet for all of Erdoans bullying, its not at all clear that Turkish voters will approve the referendum. Erdoan, sensing how high the stakes are, has been trying to flatten his opposition in the run-up to the vote. This is where Demirta and his colleagues fit into the picture. After the failed coup last summer, Erdoan began moving to crush the H.D.P.s leadershiphe knew, given the history of the relationship between Kurds and the central government, that they would never endorse an expansion of the Presidents powers. Along with Demirta, twelve other H.D.P. members of parliament have recently been jailed. According to Human Rights Watch, which released anew reporton Turkeys deteriorating situation this week, more than five thousand members of the H.D.P. and another locally based Kurdish party, the B.D.P., are currently behind bars, and the mayors of eighty-two Kurdish towns have been summarily sacked and replaced by Erdoans agents. Erdoan knew that he couldnt count on the H.D.P., so he just took them out of the picture, Emma Sinclair-Webb, Human Rights Watchs Turkey director, told me.

Polls show that the referendum has the support of only around fifty per cent of likely Turkish voters. A no vote would be a crushing rebuke to the Turkish President, and, in the short-term, could provoke a violent reaction from him. But, if the Turkish people are serious about stemming Erdoans drive to dictatorship, this may be their last chance.

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