This week Sinan Oğan, the nationalist “kingmaker” who came third in Turkey’s elections, endorsed President Erdogan. Having won just over 5% of the vote in the first round, his voters could hold the key to victory on Sunday in Turkey’s runoff for the presidency. In the meantime, Turkey’s opposition leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu is in the fight of his life, and the question remains whether he has a path to victory. Expert Sinan Ciddi joins Thanos Davelis to look at this latest development and how it could impact the election results. We also break down why Erdogan’s better than expected showing in the first election caught Turkey observers by surprise, and what the Turkey-watching world should learn from this.

Sinan Ciddi is a non-resident senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), where he contributes to FDD’s Turkey Program and Center on Military and Political Power (CMPP). He is also an Associate Professor of Security Studies at the Command and Staff College-Marine Corps University and Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service.

Read Sinan Ciddi and Steven Cook’s latest in Foreign Policy: Why Turkey Experts Got the Election All Wrong

Watch this FDD event: Turkey’s Elections: A Contested and Uncertain Outcome

You can read the articles we discuss on our podcast here:

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