An opposition lawmaker has pointed out that the personal assets of Sinan Oğan, a far-right presidential candidate in the 2023 election, increased by over TL 100 million ($3 million) after he endorsed President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in the presidential runoff, implying that Oğan was paid off to support the incumbent candidate.
Oğan’s third-place finish with 5.2 percent of the vote in the May 14 presidential election helped deprive Erdoğan, then-candidate of the People’s Alliance, of an outright victory for the first time in his 20-year rule, forcing an election runoff.
After the parties in Oğan’s ATA Alliance disagreed on who they would support in the second round, leading to its collapse, Oğan announced his endorsement of Erdoğan a week before the runoff.
Erdoğan, who would have been able to extend his time in office one last time by picking up just a fraction of Oğan’s voters, won the race by garnering 52.3 percent of the vote to his rival’s 47.7 percent on May 28.
Hasan Öztürkmen, a lawmaker from the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), on Tuesday said during a program on the pro-opposition Halk TV that Oğan purchased a large number of properties and luxury homes before and immediately after the runoff. According to the MP, the total value of the properties exceeds TL 100 million ($3 million).
According to the CHP lawmaker, Oğan acquired an 800-square-meter mansion on a seven-acre plot of land in addition to a 2,941-square-meter property in the Gölbaşı district of Ankara and a luxury apartment in Ankara’s Çankaya district.
After revealing Oğan’s “property boom” in 2023, Öztürkmen called on the far-right politician to inform the public about his assets if he has any objection to his revelations.
Similar allegations were also made by other opposition politicians about Oğan’s allegedly increasing wealth after his alliance with Erdoğan.
Oğan recently claimed that Turkey would have been “plunged into an economic and political crisis” if he had supported Erdoğan’s rival, Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, then-leader of the CHP, instead of Erdoğan.
Oğan, who portrays himself as an ardent supporter of a brand of Turkish nationalism espoused by the post-Ottoman republic’s founder Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, also said he was working to become “the joint candidate of the Turkish right” in the 2028 presidential election.