Jail for Turkish ex-premier

Erbakan: Could be out of politics for good

A former Turkish prime minister was sentenced to over two years in prison on Wednesday for embezzling party political funds.

Necmettin Erbakan was the country's first Islamist prime minister until he was forced to stand down in 1997 after being judged a threat to Turkey's secular constitution.

Islamists in power

Government lasted July 1996-June 1997

Overtures to Iran and Libya caused indignation at home and abroad

Welfare Party banned in 1998

Virtue Party, seen by many as its successor, banned in 2001

A court in Ankara sentenced him to 28 months for concealing several million dollars in funds for his now-banned Welfare Party.

Mr Erbakan, who denies the charge and says he will appeal, faces a life-long ban from politics.

The former premier, 75, who is at liberty until his appeal is heard, already escaped a one-year prison sentence in 2000 under a political amnesty.

He had been accused of sedition for a speech made in 1994 when he allegedly made strong pro-Islamist and pro-Kurdish remarks.

The 2000 verdict also barred him from political office for five years.

Wave of convictions

If his appeal fails, he faces a life-long ban from politics under a law forbidding fraud convicts to join parties or stand for office.

The Welfare Party was banned in 1998 by Turkey's Constitutional Court on charges of undermining the secular political system.

Following the ban, the party's funds were seized and an investigation led to charges that Mr Erbakan and other party officials were involved in diverting $3.5m earmarked for local party branches.

The court sentenced 71 officials to terms of between 10 months and one year and acquitted seven others, including former party leaders Sevket Kazan and Ahmet Tekdal.