After winning 5% of the vote in the first round, the ultranationalist is in a strong position. But if the postponement of votes can be decisive, the activists we met seem to have already chosen their side.
The campaign between the two rounds has started in Turkey, and there is a key man to convince. Before the second round of the presidential election, which will be organized on Sunday May 28, the two finalists are trying to get the votes of candidate Sinan Ogan. He collected 5.2% of the vote in the first round, and has not yet announced whether he will support one of the two candidates.
>> Presidential election in Turkey: who is Sinan Ogan, who came third in the election and key man in the second round?
The ultranationalist candidate, anti-Kurdish and opposed to immigration, is therefore in the position of “kingmaker”: he is negotiating with Recep Tayyip Erdogan and with Kemal Kiliçdaroglu, even if his electorate is very volatile and is not attached to a party.
“There is nothing that attracts me in Erdogan’s program”
Sinan Ogan notably proposed the return of the more than three million Syrian refugees who live on Turkish soil. The flags that line the entrance wall of Bilal’s café are not there randomly. There is the old flag of the Ottoman Empire or that of Turkistan.
Symbols for those who, like him, dream of a greater Turkey and go and recover historic territories, while rejecting those who, he assures, have nothing to do here: “It’s because of the Syrians that we don’t have peace of mind. It’s because of them that young people can’t find work, because the Syrians work at lower wages, without social security. C it is also because of them that the rents increase“, he denounces.
Three and a half million refugees that each of the two candidates now wants to send back to the other side of the border. A good way to please those who call themselves Turkish nationalists. A desire to please, but it’s still not enough to decide Emin: “There is nothing that attracts me in President Erdogan’s program.”
“I do not find my political values there and what is in his program, these are things he has already done.”
But if “nothing [l]’attracted“, it is however for Recep Tayyip Erdogan that he will vote in the second round, by rejection of Kemal Kiliçdaroglu who, for his only fault, is to have allied with the left to try to win.