Sinan Ogan, centre, a nationalist presidential candidate, is surrounded by supporters during a city tour, in Ankara, Turkey, on May 4.Burhan Ozbilici/The Associated Press
Turkey’s third-place election candidate endorsed President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Monday, boosting the incumbent and intensifying the challenges for opposition candidate Kemal Kilicdaroglu in a Sunday runoff vote.
Sinan Ogan, a hard-line nationalist who was little known among the broader public before the campaign, won 5.2 per cent support in the initial presidential election on May 14, prompting some analysts to call him a potential “kingmaker” for the runoff.
“I declare that we will support the People’s Alliance candidate Mr. Recep Tayyip Erdogan in the second round,” Mr. Ogan said at a news conference in Ankara, adding his campaign made Turkish nationalists “key players” in politics.
Mr. Kilicdaroglu’s Nation Alliance “failed to convince us about the future,” while the decision to back Mr. Erdogan was based on a principle of “non-stop struggle [against] terrorism,” he said.
Mr. Erdogan received 49.5 per cent support on May 14 compared to Mr. Kilicdaroglu at 44.9 per cent, while the ruling party’s coalition won a majority in parliament. That gives Mr. Erdogan an advantage as he seeks to extend his two-decade rule in Turkey’s most consequential election ever.
Mr. Ogan, 55, a former academic, was the first-round presidential candidate of an alliance of right-wing parties led by the Victory Party, which is known for its anti-immigrant stand in Turkey, the world’s biggest host of refugees.
In an interview with Reuters last week, Mr. Ogan said that his goal was to remove two mainly Kurdish parties from Turkey’s “political equation” and bolster Turkish nationalists and secularists.
The pro-Kurdish party HDP has endorsed Mr. Kilicdaroglu, while the Kurdish-Islamist Huda-Par backs Mr. Erdogan.
Mr. Kilicdaroglu has pledged to roll back much of Mr. Erdogan’s sweeping changes to Turkish domestic, foreign and economic policies, including reversing an unorthodox economic program to address a cost-of-living crisis.
Mr. Erdogan has said a vote for him in the runoff is a vote for stability.
Analysts say Mr. Ogan’s support should give Mr. Erdogan a boost but also divide Mr. Ogan’s supporters. The Victory Party will separately announce its own stand on the runoff on Tuesday.
Mr. Erdogan’s strong showing in the initial vote confounded pollsters who had said Mr. Kilicdaroglu led opinion polls. They later pointed to an unexpected surge in nationalist support at the ballot box to explain the result.
Last week, Mr. Kilicdaroglu, head of the secularist Republican People’s Party (CHP) and candidate of a six-party alliance, sharpened his tone and vowed to send all migrants back to their countries once elected.
A small member of Mr. Ogan’s alliance, the Justice Party, quit the bloc at the weekend and endorsed Mr. Kilicdaroglu in the runoff.
One Ogan supporter said last week she would not vote in the runoff because the remaining two candidates do not appeal.
“I voted for Ogan in the first round, but I am not planning to vote in the second round. My heart and my mind say ‘No’ to both candidates who aligned with terrorist organizations,” Fidan, 33, who lives in Germany, said last week.
Mr. Ogan entered parliament in 2011 with the nationalist MHP, launched an unsuccessful bid in 2015 for the party’s leadership, and was later expelled.