Necmettin Erbakan

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Necmettin Erbakan (born October 29, 1926) is a Turkish engineer, academician, politician, political party leader and prime minister of Turkey between 1996 and 1997.

1 Biography
2 Political activities
3 Views
4 See also
5 Notes

[edit] Biography

Erbakan was born in Sinop, at the coast of Black Sea in northern Turkey. He graduated from the Mechanical Engineering Faculty at the Istanbul Technical University (İTÜ) in 1948, and received a PhD degree from the prestigious 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.

[edit] Political activities

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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 "Milli Selamet Partisi" (National Salvation Party) which, at its peak, served in coalition with the "Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi" (Republican People's Party) of Prime Minister Bülent Ecevit during the Cyprus crisis of 1974.

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 1990, and became the leader of Refah Partisi (Welfare Party). His party benefitted 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 neighbouring countries. Erbakan founded "D-8", which was supposed to be a new initiative for economic cooperation among developing Muslim countries. It included Pakistan, Bangladesh, Egypt, Nigeria, Iran, Indonesia, Malaysia and Turkey.

Necmettin Erbakan's ideology is called Millî Görüş (National Vision). The organisation uphelds nowadays that the word "national" is to be understood in the sense of monotheistic ecumenism.^[1]^[2] Turkey's economy and social welfare might have been gradually improving under his rule. However, some big trade unions, associations, newspapers, television channels attacked the government owing to their self interest and private issues with provocing the Turkish military as exaggerating many artificial events. 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 parliement, and when Erbakan stepped down, the President Suleyman 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 extremely hostile to the Erbakan government), this is usually known as the "postmodern coupe" of Turkey.

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

Despite being under constant political ban, Erbakan nonetheless acted as a mentor and informal advisor to former Refah members who founded both Fazilet Partisi (Virtue Party) and the Saadet Partisi (Felicity Party).

As well as his political career Necmettin Erbakan had his success in mechanical engineering and has invented several devices.

He also received a prison sentence as government allocated political funds into his party were embezzled. The whereabouts of this huge amount of money is unknown but industry insiders mention he has purchased a cigarette paper manufacturing paper mill in the black sea region.

[edit] Views

Erbakan was fundamentalist in religious belief and was not a mainstream politician though he had been well-known, especially as an ingenious politician. Erbakan feels that science and history prove that Islam is the only salvation for humanity. He alleges that the West is being ruled by a "racist Imperialism, i.e. the Zionism". The latter, he claims, had been created 5765 years ago by a "book of magic called the Kabbala"^[3]^[4]