ISTANBUL, February 27:Former Turkish Prime Minister Necmettin Erbakan, the founder of Turkey’s modern Islamist movement, died from heart failure today, aged 85.
Erbakan was a scientist who devoted his life to learning. We will remember him with gratitude,” said Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan, for many years one of Erbakan’s lieutenants.
Erbakan rose to prominence in the 1970s, building up a party with an Islamist appeal to the conservative rural population and urban poor in a country where religion was excluded from political life.
The state-run Anatolia news agency said Erbakan died at Ankara’s Guven hospital where he was under treatment.
We lost a world leader,” said Yasin Hatipoglu, a close aide.
The world of Islam lost a great man.”
Erbakan served as prime minister only one year after he was forced to step down by the military.
His Islamist Welfare Party was banned in January 1998 and he and other party leaders were banned from holding political posts for five years.
Erdogan, a Welfare Party member, was the mayor of Istanbul at the time.
Erbakan was a professor of engineering before becoming a politician.
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