ANKARA, 3 December 2003 — Turkey’s appeals court sentenced former Prime Minister and Islamic leader Necmettin Erbakan yesterday to two years and four months in jail for misappropriating party funds, the Anatolian news agency said.
Erbakan’s sentencing comes at a time when secular Turkey is cracking down on militants after four suicide bomb attacks in November that killed 61 people. Erbakan has never publicly advocated violence in the pursuit of Islamist aims.
Erbakan, 77, a veteran politician, was among 70 Islamists charged with misappropriating one trillion lira ($3.6 million) of funds from the now-defunct Welfare Party.
He has the right to appeal once against the sentence. If his appeal fails, he will probably spend one year in prison, Anatolian said. He would also lose the right to stand in elections or to join a political party.
Erbakan served as prime minister in a coalition with conservatives for one year until the army helped remove him from office in June 1997 after deciding he posed a threat to Turkey’s strictly secular political order. The charges against him date back to that time, when, Anatolian said, Welfare Party officials tried to squirrel away cash before the party was shut down. It said two lawmakers from the current ruling party, the Justice and Development Party (AKP), were also suspects in the case but could not be charged because they have parliamentary immunity.
Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan’s AKP traces its roots back to banned Islamist parties such as Welfare, though he has steered a more pro-Western course than Erbakan and the AKP says it does not follow a secret religious agenda.
Meanwhile, Erdogan pledged to stick with political reforms despite a wave of devastating suicide bomb attacks that has stirred fears of a clampdown on civil liberties. “Terrorist attacks cannot damage Turkey’s future... Democracy will not be given up for the sake of stability,” Erdogan said in his first address to the ruling party since twin blasts in Istanbul on Nov. 20.
But he also said democratic freedoms would not be allowed to compromise national security by providing shelter to terrorists. Some liberal commentators have expressed concern Turkey may reverse some of its recent European Union-inspired reforms under pressure from the security forces, dealing a blow to its hopes of starting entry talks with the bloc in 2005.
A total of 61 people were killed and more than 700 wounded in suicide bomb attacks on two Istanbul synagogues on Nov. 15 and in similar double blasts aimed at British targets in the same city five days later. A state security court has charged 21 people, and more than 100 were detained in connection with the blasts. “No strategy of terrorism will be able to break our national unity,” said Erdogan. “For us, every activity that targets the lives of innocent people is a terrorist activity, whatever the ideas professed by the perpetrators.”
Turkish authorities yesterday released 26 people questioned in connection with last month’s deadly suicide bombings in Istanbul, while four others were set to appear before a court where they could face charges. Those released yesterday included 20 of the 22 people handed over by Syria at the weekend, along with six people who had earlier been detained in Istanbul.
The two remaining suspects handed over by Syria — Hilmi Tugluoglu, who is believed to be linked to those who masterminded the suicide attacks, and his wife Leyla — were transferred from the border town of Hatay to Ankara for further questioning. Tugluoglu was said to have met with one of those who planned the attacks, Azad Ekinci, and to have known the suicide bombers who carried out last month’s quadruple bombings, Anatolian said
Three men were to appear last evening before an Istanbul State Security Court where they could be charged with membership of an underground organization.
