Necmettin Erbakan, born in Sinop, is a Turkish engineer, academic, politician (eventually political party leader), and was Prime Minister of Turkey between 1996 and 1997.

Biography

Erbakan was born in Sinop, at the coast of Black Sea in northern Turkey. After the high school education in İstanbul Lisesi, he graduated from the Mechanical Engineering Faculty at the Istanbul Technical University in 1948, and received a PhD degree from the RWTH Aachen University, Germany. After returning to Turkey, Erbakan became lecturer at the İTÜ and was appointed professor in 1965 at the same university. After working some time in leading position in the industry, he switched over to politics, and was elected deputy of Konya in 1969.

As well as his political career Necmettin Erbakan had his success in mechanical engineering and has invented several devices. He was the chief engineer in the team that designed German Leopard 1A tanks.

Political activities

A mainstay of the religious wing of Turkish politics since the 1970s, Erbakan has been the leader of a series of political parties that have risen to prominence only to be banned by Turkey's secular authorities. In the 1970s, Erbakan was chairman of the National Salvation Party which, at its peak, served in coalition with the Republican People's Party of Prime Minister Bülent Ecevit during the Cyprus crisis of 1974. In the mid 1974 Prime Minister Ecevit visited England to discuss escalating violence. There was no agreement between Ecevit's CHP and Erbakan's MSP (National Salvation Party)on military intervention to the Island, which was proposed by MSP. During Ecevit's visit to London, Erbakan gave the order of military operation to the army.

In the wake of the 1980 military coup, Erbakan and his party were banned from politics. He reemerged following a referendum to lift the ban in 1987,komedu and became the leader of Refah Partisi (Welfare Party). His party benefited in the 1990s from the acrimony between the leaders of Turkey's two most prominent conservative parties, Mesut Yılmaz and Tansu Çiller. He led his party to a surprise success in the general elections of 1995. He became Prime Minister in 1996 in coalition with Çiller's Dogru Yol Partisi (True Path Party), and attempted to further Turkey's relations with the Arab nations. In addition to trying to follow an economic welfare program, which was supposedly intended to increase welfare among Turkish citizens, the government tried to implement multi-dimensional political approach to relations with the neighboring countries.

Necmettin Erbakan's ideology is called Millî Görüş (National View). The organisation upholds nowadays that the word "national" is to be understood in the sense of monotheistic ecumenism. Erbakan's image was seriously damaged by his famous speech making fun of the nightly demonstrations against the Susurluk scandal. Even though his government had no responsibility for the scandal, he was nevertheless widely blamed at the time for his indifference. At last, the Turkish military gradually increased the harshness and frequency of its public warnings to Erbakan's government, eventually prompting Erbakan to step down 1997. At the time there was a formal deal between Prime Minister Erbakan, and the leader of Dogru Yol, Tansu Ciller, for a "period based premiership". According to this, Erbakan was to act as the Prime Minister for a certain period (a fixed amount of time, which wasn't made absolutely clear to the public), then he would step down, and Tansu Ciller would become the Prime Minister for a comparable period of time. However, Ciller's party was the third in the parliaement, and when Erbakan stepped down, the President Süleyman Demirel, assigned the leader of the second largest party, who successfully formed the government. Since this whole act was orchestrated by the military (who was hostile to the Erbakan government), this is usually known as the "postmodern coup" of Turkey.

Refah Partisi was subsequently closed down by court order, and Erbakan was banned once again from active politics.

Despite often being under political ban, Erbakan nonetheless acted as a mentor and informal advisor to former Refah members who founded both Virtue Party and the Felicity Party. Erbakan is currently the leader of the Islamist movement Millî Görüş, which he also founded.

He was fined 12 million Lira fine for embezzling of 1 billion Lira of his party's funds. Instead of serving a prison sentence per the Penal Code, he was placed under house arrest, due to his age (82) and condition. In addition, President Gul pardoned Erbakan from having to serve the entire duration of his sentence (terminating on September 23, 2010), citing Article 104 of the Constitution (regarding sanctions against chronically ill persons). Nevertheless, Erbakan's numerous assets, including 148 kilos of gold, may be seized.

Views

His foreign policy had two main pillars: Close cooperation and unity among Muslim countries and struggle against Zionism. He created "D-8" or The Developing Eight, to achieve a strong economic and political unity among Muslim countries. It has eight members including Turkey, Iran, Malaysia, Indonesia, Egypt, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Nigeria. These countries constitute around 14% of the world's population, with a total of more than 800 million people.

References