ANKARA – Turkey’s third-place election candidate endorsed President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Monday.

The move is a boost to the incumbent which also intensifies the challenges for opposition candidate Kemal Kilicdaroglu ahead of a Sunday run-off vote.

Mr Sinan Ogan, a hardline nationalist who was little-known among the broader public before the campaign, won 5.2 per cent support in the initial presidential election on May 14.

It prompted some analysts to call him a potential “kingmaker” for the run-off.

“I declare that we will support the People’s Alliance candidate Mr Recep Tayyip Erdogan in the second round,” Mr Ogan told a press conference in Ankara, adding that his campaign had made Turkish nationalists “key players” in politics.

Mr Kilicdaroglu’s Nation Alliance “failed to convince us about the future”, while the decision to back Mr Erdogan was based on a principle of “non-stop struggle (against) terrorism”, he said.

Mr Erdogan received 49.5 per cent of voter support on May 14, compared with Mr Kilicdaroglu at 44.9 per cent.

The ruling party’s coalition won a majority in Parliament.

That gives Mr Erdogan an advantage as he seeks to extend his two-decade rule in what is one of Turkey’s most consequential elections ever.

Mr Ogan, 55, a former academic, was the first-round presidential candidate of an alliance of right-wing parties led by the Victory Party.

It is known for its anti-immigrant stance in Turkey, the world’s biggest host of refugees.

In an interview with Reuters last week, Mr Ogan said his goal was to remove two mainly Kurdish parties from Turkey’s “political equation” and bolster Turkish nationalists and secularists.

The pro-Kurdish party HDP, or Peoples’ Democratic Party, has endorsed Mr Kilicdaroglu, while the Kurdish-Islamist Huda-Par backs Mr Erdogan.

Mr Kilicdaroglu has pledged to roll back much of Mr Erdogan’s sweeping changes to Turkish domestic, foreign and economic policies.

These include reversing an unorthodox economic programme to address a cost-of-living crisis.

Mr Erdogan has said a vote for him in the run-off is a vote for stability.

In an interview with state broadcaster TRT late on Monday, Mr Erdogan expressed his pleasure at Mr Ogan’s endorsement.

“I believe that this union of forces will be beneficial for our country and nation,” Mr Erdogan said.

He added that he and Mr Ogan were in agreement on many issues, including the fight against terrorism and relations with Turkic states.

Commenting on Mr Ogan’s anti-immigrant stance, Mr Erdogan said his government already had plans to resettle one million refugees in Syria, and a timetable for that plan could be discussed in talks with the Syrian government after the run-off.

Nationalist support

Analysts say Mr Ogan’s support should give Mr Erdogan a boost but also divide Mr Ogan’s supporters.

The Victory Party will separately announce its own stance on the run-off on Tuesday.

Mr Erdogan’s strong showing in the initial vote confounded pollsters who had said Mr Kilicdaroglu led opinion polls.

They later pointed to an unexpected surge in nationalist support at the ballot box to explain the result.

Last week, Mr Kilicdaroglu, head of the secularist Republican People’s Party, or CHP, and candidate of a six-party alliance, sharpened his tone and vowed to send all migrants back to their countries once elected.

A small member of Mr Ogan’s alliance, the Justice Party, quit the bloc at the weekend and endorsed Mr Kilicdaroglu in the run-off.

One Ogan supporter said last week she would not vote in the run-off because the remaining two candidates were not appealing.

“I voted for Ogan in the first round, but I am not planning to vote in the second round. My heart and my mind say ‘no’ to both candidates who aligned with terrorist organisations,” Ms Fidan, 33, who lives in Germany, said last week.

Mr Ogan entered Parliament in 2011 with the nationalist MHP, launched an unsuccessful bid in 2015 for the party’s leadership, and was later expelled. REUTERS