Fri 19 May 2023:
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan on Friday met with the presidential candidate of ATA (Ancestral) Alliance, Sinan Ogan.
The meeting was held in Dolmabahce Palace in Istanbul and took about an hour.
Millions of voters went to polls on Sunday to elect the country’s next president and the members of its 600-seat parliament.
Voter turnout in the elections was 88.92%, with the turnout from Turkish citizens abroad at 52.69%, according to Ahmet Yener, head of the Supreme Election Council.
Entering the campaign at the last minute, hardline nationalist Oğan, 55, picked up 5.2% of the vote in Sunday’s landmark election that ran into a second round after neither Erdoğan nor his main challenger Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu secured more than 50% of the vote.
Erdoğan finished with 49.5%, taking a clear lead over Kılıçdaroğlu, who lagged at 44.9%.
Oğan, however, running as an independent, has since emerged as a kingmaker and basked in newfound fame over his potential second-round endorsement.
Erdoğan finished the first round with 49.51% of the vote, while his closest competitor Kemal Kilicdaroglu, the leader of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), came second at 44.88%, Yener said.
Sinan Ogan of the ATA (Ancestral) Alliance got 5.17%, while Muharrem Ince, who withdrew from the presidential race late last week after ballots had already been printed, got 0.44%.
As no candidate was able to win an outright majority in Sunday’s vote, a second-round runoff will be held on May 28.
Who will he endorse?
“Ogan was clear from day one – he said he would support the side that distances itself from terrorism,” said Murat Yildiz, a former adviser for the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) who worked alongside Ogan when he was also a member of the MHP.
“He will ask Kilicdaroglu for promises that he won’t collaborate with HDP on some issues,” Yildiz said. “It will be difficult to discuss this with Erdogan because Erdogan has aligned with Huda-Par and there are three deputies from Huda-Par now.”
Berk Esen, a political scientist at Istanbul’s Sabanci University, said splits between Kilicdaroglu and the nationalist Iyi Party, the second-largest party in his opposition Nation Alliance, turned nationalist voters away from his candidacy.
“A small constituency in this country does not particularly like Erdogan but is also very distant from the pro-Kurdish movement and finds Kilicdaroglu to be a weak leader,” he said. “Ogan recruited those voters.”
“Many of them are Turkish nationalist voters who are not really sold by messages from either side because Erdogan is allied with Huda-Par, a Kurdish Islamist party, and Kilicdaroglu was seen as having a too cosy relationship with the Kurdish [HDP] opposition,” Esen said.
SOURCE: INDEPENDENT PRESS AND NEWS AGENCIES
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