A little-known nationalist who helped push Turkiye\u2019s election to a runoff said on Tuesday he could throw his support behind either President Recep Tayyip Erdogan or his secular rival.
\nEntering the campaign at the last minute, Sinan Ogan, 55, won 5.2 per cent of the vote in Sunday\u2019s landmark election, helping deprive Erdogan of a first-round victory for the first time in his 20-year rule. Erdogan finished with 49.5pc while Kilicdaroglu secured 44.9pc, a disappointing finish after polls suggested the opposition leader could win.
\nOgan said he expected to do even better, voicing hopes that he could be elected president one day.
\n\u201cI expected even more \u2014 around 10-11pc of the vote,\u201d said Ogan, running as an independent, he said he was open to dialogue but may take a few days to make up his mind about who \u2014 if anyone \u2014 to endorse. \u201cA decision will be made after talks with both Mr Erdogan and Mr Kilicdaroglu,\u201d he added.
\n\u201cWe may say we don\u2019t support either of them.\u201d A Turkish official said that Erdogan\u2019s Islamic-rooted party will soon make a statement about possible talks with Ogan.
\nOgan, who speaks English and studied in a top Moscow university, said his voters included \u201cTurkish nationalists as well as young people who find us more intellectual and who are fed up with the old faces in politics\u201d.
\nMatt Gertken, chief political strategist at BCA Research, suggested that Ogan mostly took votes away from Erdogan, whose base is comprised of nationalists and religious conservatives.
\n\u201cIn the second round, Erdogan will not necessarily win the majority of Ogan\u2019s votes, but only one-fifth of those votes would grant him the presidency, other things being equal,\u201d Gertken said.
\nOgan entered parliament as a member of the ultranationalist MHP party in 2011.
\nHe fell out with the party\u2019s leadership after criticising the MHP\u2019s poor performance in 2015 polls.
\nOgan was expelled from the party but then readmitted after winning a court battle.
\nTwo years later, he was expelled again for opposing a 2017 constitutional referendum that expand\u00aded Erdogan\u2019s presidential powers.
\nOgan came under pressure to drop out of the race after a fourth candidate, the nationalist Muharrem Ince, ended his campaign just four days before the election.
\nAsked if he was ready to make up with Erdogan after feuding with his coalition allies, Ogan said: \u201cThere can be no room for resentment, if you aspire to rule the state.\u201d Ogan said anyone he supports must firmly renounce \u201cterrorism\u201d \u2014 the term Turkish politicians use to refer to banned Kurdish fighters who have been fighting for greater autonomy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A little-known nationalist who helped push Turkiye\u2019s election to a runoff said on Tuesday he could throw his support behind either President Recep Tayyip Erdogan…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6855,"comment_status":"registered_only","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6854","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6854","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6854"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6854\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/6855"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6854"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6854"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6854"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}