ANKARA – Necmettin Erbakan, the mentor of political Islam in Turkey and the country’s first Islamist prime minister, died after a protracted illness Sunday, aged 84, aides said. “Turkey has lost one of its most valuable people… Let him rest in peace,” Erbakan’s long-time associate Oguzhan Asilturk said on NTV television.
Erbakan, who in recent years headed the small Felicity Party, was hospitalised in Ankara in early January due to what was announced as a foot infection, NTV said. The veteran politician had looked increasing frail in recent years and often used a wheelchair. Erbakan became secular Turkey’s first Islamist prime minister in 1996 at the helm of a coalition with a centre-right party.
He was forced to resign a year later as a result of a harsh army-led secularist campaign. In 1998, the constitutional court outlawed his Welfare Party for anti-secular activities, which eventually led to a split in his movement, with moderates, led by current Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, breaking ranks with their mentor.
