“Refugees pose the greatest danger to our economy, our culture, public order, our internal and external security. It’s time for them to go home.” This was tweeted last week by the candidate from the nationalist ATA coalition in the presidential elections in Turkey, Sinan Ogan. Anyone who hoped that such a comment would cause a negative reaction in the pre-election period. Türkiye, was denied. The reaction on Twitter has been overwhelmingly positive.

It is estimated that about five and a half million refugees live in Turkey today. After the pandemic, during the economic crisis and after the devastating earthquakes that hit the country in February last year, these people are no longer welcome. For Sinan Ogan, they are the central issue of the election campaign. He demands their immediate removal and, praising the Turks in every way, claims that the Syrian refugees are dangerous and criminals. In the first round of elections last Sunday, Sinan Ogan may have been in third and last place among the contenders for the presidency, but he scored a solid percentage of 5.1%. Now he feels that he can influence the final outcome of the second round fight between Tayyip Erdogan and Kemal Kilicdaroglu. But there are two key questions: whether he will openly support one of the two candidates, and whether his constituents will actually follow either of his proposals.

Ogan got his way

The voting behavior of his followers has not yet been sufficiently analyzed. There is no doubt that without Sinan Ogan, neither Erdogan can be re-elected nor Kilicdaroglu can stage a coup. From the very beginning, Sinan Ogan’s strategic goal was to decide the outcome of the presidential elections in the second round and to force the two gladiators to sit down at the negotiating table himself, but on his own terms. “When that moment comes, we will not make any concessions for free,” he said ahead of the election, implying that he would demand specific ministries.

Currently, Sinan Ogan continues consultations with party bodies. He is then expected to come face to face with Erdogan and Kılıçdaroğlu. So far, he has accused both of them of collaborating with the Kurds. He even accuses Erdogan of collaborating with the pro-Kurdish Islamist HÜDAPAR party. For their part, the opposition coalition is praising Sinan Ogan for insisting on treating the pro-Kurdish HDP party, the third force in Turkey’s National Assembly, as an offshoot of the terrorist organization PKK.

Ideologically, Sinan Ogan is closer to Erdogan’s conservative Islam than to the liberal version of Kılıçdaroğlu. In order to support the opposition in the second round, it is believed that he will put forward very specific conditions, for example, he will distance himself from the Kurds. It remains doubtful whether Kilitdaroglu, who received the most votes in the first round in the stronghold constituencies of the pro-Kurdish HDP, can agree to this.

From University to Gray Wolves

Sinan Ogan was born in the city of Igdir in Anatolia. He studied economics and administrative sciences at Marmara University in Istanbul. He worked in higher educational institutions in Russia and Azerbaijan, headed the Department of Russian Studies and Ukrainian Studies of the Eurasian Center for Strategic Studies (ASAM). Initially, he was active in the Gray Wolves, an extremist group that is considered a continuation of the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP).

Ogan himself was a MHP MP, Tayyip Erdogan’s current government partner. However, in 2017, due to internal party differences, he was expelled from the party and has since been looking for a new political home, preferably under his own leadership. Looks like he did it. In March, four smaller parties from the anti-system far-right space formed the ATA alliance with him and nominated Sinan Ogan as a presidential candidate.