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There is a sentense:

Erdoğan reiterated a promise to continue a policy of repatriating Syrian refugees after riding a wave of hardline nationalist sentiment that saw the former ultranationalist presidential candidate Sinan Oğan joined him to declare victory in Ankara.

I copied this from the The Guardian.

I feel it is weird as there is after verbing ... that saw ... . Who saw?

As someone state that the that clause refers to a wave of, so if we make that refers to sentiment, how should we write this sentence. From these, I can tell under what conditions, what that refers to.

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  • "Saw" can mean "lead to". The sentence is a bit of a mouthful, and "joined" is a typo (should be "join"), but it looks like it was the wave that saw / lead to Sinan joining him.
    – ralph.m
    Commented May 30, 2023 at 4:32
  • @ralph.m But shouldn't that refer to the thing just before it? So, does that refer to sentiment?
    – Y. zeng
    Commented May 30, 2023 at 4:48
  • @ralph.m - I think you meant that saw (past tense) can mean led to (past tense).
    – Michael Harvey
    Commented May 30, 2023 at 6:37
  • 1
    "joined" is wrong, it should be "join". However it is wrong in the source too: theguardian.com/world/2023/may/29/….
    – James K
    Commented May 30, 2023 at 7:06
  • You should include the link to the source in your answer. You aren't a new contributor and should know better.
    – James K
    Commented May 30, 2023 at 7:12

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This is newspaper-speak, which isn't quite like normal English. Unfortunately, reporters have become influenced by "headlinese", which has a number of idioms originally intended to cut down the number of words so as to fit the space better; over the years many of these have made their way into the body copy itself, where they don't really belong.

So, "after" is frequently used to join together two related events even if they don't follow directly on from each other.

And "saw" is a shorthand way of saying "caused" or "led to".

But note that you're not quite parsing this correctly; it wasn't the "riding" that "saw" anything, it was the "wave of nationalist sentiment":

Erdoğan reiterated a promise to continue a policy of repatriating Syrian refugees. He rode a wave of hardline nationalist sentiment [to win the election].

[Thanks to/because of this,] the former ultranationalist presidential candidate Sinan Oğan joined him to declare victory in Ankara.

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  • I often see 'see' used to mean that something happened during some period, e.g. Franklin Roosevelt's presidency (or 'the 1930s') saw a number of series of programs, public work projects, financial reforms, and regulations which addressed problems caused by the Depression.
    – Michael Harvey
    Commented Jun 2, 2023 at 20:27

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