Oğan to support Erdoğan in presidential elections runoff

ANKARA

Sinan Oğan has announced on May 22 that he will support President Recep Erdoğan in the presidential elections runoff.

The four-party ATA Alliance, whose presidential candidate Oğan garnered 5.2 percent of votes in the first round of the presidential elections, has been dissolved, with its main components to decide individually about which of the two presidential contenders they’ll support in the runoff elections.

“The ATA Alliance has officially ended. Every party will make its own decision,” Justice Party Chairman Vecdet Öz, a component of the ATA Alliance, told in a televised interview late on May 21. “I will respect the decision to be taken by Prof. Ümit [Özdağ, the chairman of the Victory Party]. Sinan Oğan can act the way he wants,” he added.

Türkiye will go to the runoff presidential polls on May 28 to elect incumbent President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan or the Nation Alliance’s joint presidential nominee Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu as the 13th president of Türkiye.

Oğan who gained around 2.5 million of the votes, was supposed to play an important role in shaping the results in the second round in case the ATA Alliance would remain as a bloc.

Vecdet Öz of the Justice Party announced that his party will support Kılıçdaroğlu in the second round. He and Kılıçdaroğlu held a meeting on May 22 to discuss the general political situation.

Özdağ, the most influential figure in the alliance, will announce his decision through a press conference on May 23. Özdağ was in talks with Kılıçdaroğlu last week and met Numan Kurtulmuş, the deputy leader of the Justice and Development Party (AKP), on May 22.