site.btaSinan Ogan Could Decide Turkiye's Presidential Run-off

A presidential May 28 run-off will take place in Turkiye between current head of state Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who lead the race in the first round, and the National Alliance candidate Kemal Kilicdaroglu. In the first round, ATA Alliance‘s presidential candidate Sinan Ogan received 5.7% of the vote, or about 2.8 million votes, putting him in a key position because his support for one of the two candidates in the run-off could prove decisive for the outcome of the election.

The 56-year-old Turkish politician's name made the headlines in 2015 when he was expelled from the far-right Devlet Bahceli’s Nationalist Movement Party, an ally of Erdogan in the Republican Alliance.

Sinan Ogan filed a lawsuit, won, and his membership in the party was restored. He was a member of the Grand National Assembly of Turkiye for two consecutive terms. A scholar and public figure, he is known for his work on rapprochement and cooperation between the Turkish-speaking republics, mainly with Azerbaijan.

Ogan comes from a family of Azerbaijani Turks. He graduated from Marmara University in Istanbul and specialized in international relations at the Moscow State Institute of International Relations. He was awarded an Azerbaijan state decoration for his service as a representative of the Turkish Cooperation and Coordination Agency in Baku. He served one term as chairman of the Russia-Ukraine Department at the Eurasian Centre for Strategic Studies.

Sinan Ogan is not a party leader. On 11 March, he was nominated as a presidential candidate of the electoral coalition of Turkish nationalist parties ATA, led by Umit Ozdag's Victory Party, which is known for its anti-immigrant positions. In his campaign speeches, Ozdag promised that "they will definitely return Syrians to their homes".

Analysts describe Ogan as a pragmatic nationalist. In his political credo, which he presented recently in an interview with the Turkish newspaper Haberturk, he stressed that he is a representative of Turkish Kemalist nationalists, as opposed to Devlet Bahceli’s nationalists who side with Erdogan's conservative Islamists. Ogan has indicated that his goal is to remove the two main Kurdish parties from Turkiye's "political equation" and to strengthen Turkish nationalists and secularists who profess Ataturk principles.

The main question currently is what will be Ogan’s position during the second round of the presidential elections.

"Voters have sent a message that they don't trust the opposition enough, but they have defined our role as a balancing force against Erdogan's ruling party. Let our nation be calm. We will not allow Turkiye to fall into crisis. We managed this election process in the right way, we influenced and changed the election results. I am not someone's backup candidate. I am an ambitious candidate who has won the votes of Turkish nationalists and Kemalists," Ogan said.

Therefore, it is not yet possible to predict exactly whom Sinan Ogan's alliance will support. According to Ogan, the ATA Alliance will decide this after consultations and will announce its decision on Friday.