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High Swiss turnout for Turkish voters

Turkish people living in Switzerland queue to vote on the constitutional referendum in front of the Turkish consulate in Zurich on April 2 Reuters

Interest in a constitutional reform in Turkey is high in Switzerland. Of the almost 100,000 Swiss residents who are eligible to vote in Turkey, 57.11% have cast their vote, more than the 44.79% who voted in Turkish parliamentary elections in 2015.

As of Sunday evening, some 54,400 of the 95,263 Turks in Switzerland who are registered to vote back home had done so, according to the electoral commission in Ankara on Monday. The ballot boxes in embassies and consulates in Zurich, Bern and Geneva closed on Sunday a week before those in Turkey.

In neighbouring Austria and Germany, turnout lay lower at 50.59% and 48.73% respectively. Turks who live outside Turkey make up around 5% of the electorate and could, in a close outcome, swing the result.

Turks in Switzerland, who had two weeks to cast their vote, are undecided about the set of 18 proposed amendments to the Turkish constitution which will boost the powers of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. But since many Kurds live in Switzerland, more people are believed to have voted against the reform than for it.

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