TURKEY: In the run-off election on May 28, incumbent Recep Tayyip Erdogan received support from Sinan Ogan, who came third in place in last week’s Turkish presidential election. Ogan supported Erdogan at a press conference in the Turkish capital Ankara on Monday, saying that his campaign had made nationalists “key players” in Turkish politics.
The statement comes as Turks start preparing to cast their ballots again on Sunday to start deciding whether Erdogan or Kemal Kilicdaroglu, the leader of the main opposition, will hold power in the nation for the next five years.
Erdogan narrowly missed out on an outright victory in the first round of voting on May 14 with 49.52 percent of the vote, just shy of the requisite 50% threshold.
A six-party opposition alliance’s candidate, Kilicdaroglu, earned 44.88 percent of the vote. Ogan came in third with 5.17 percent, which led some analysts to identify him as a conceivable “kingmaker” in the run-off.
Kilicdaroglu has pledged to overturn many of Erdogan’s substantial changes to Turkey’s domestic, foreign, and economic policies. This contains undoing an unexpected economic plan that many economists believe made a significant contribution to the devaluation of the lira and the consequent increase in inflation.
Ogan mentioned highlighting Erdogan’s majority in the parliament as the prime reason for his decision, “It is important that the newly elected president is under the same [leadership] as the parliament.”
Ogan added that the Kilicdaroglu Alliance, on the other hand, had been unable to demonstrate significant success against the People’s Alliance, which had been in power for 20 years and had been unable to build a perspective that might persuade regarding the future.
Having followed a Friday meeting in Istanbul with Erdogan, Ogan gave his aid to the Turkish president. After the hour-long meeting, nothing was said.
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