The Supreme Court of Appeals in April of last year upheld a local court’s decision to sentence Erbakan to serve a nearly two-and-a-half-year prison sentence to be served at home.
To justify his pardon, Gül cited a report prepared by the forensic medicine administration, showing that Erbakan’s health was deteriorating.

Erbakan, a former prime minister and leader of the now-defunct Welfare party (RP), was sentenced to two years and four months behind bars in a lawsuit known as the “lost trillion” case, but was able to postpone serving his sentence by submitting medical reports to the court. The lost trillion case concerns the disappearance of more than TL 1 trillion in Treasury grants to the RP.

The court ruled at the time that Erbakan could serve out his jail term at home. Erbakan’s lawyers appealed the ruling, and the Supreme Court of Appeals, which concluded its review yesterday, ruled that Erbakan was to serve the rest of his 28-month jail sentence at home.

The arrest order for Erbakan coincided with a time of heightened political tension in Turkey, where a secular elite, including judges and army generals, was at loggerheads with the ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Party) government over the role of Islam in the European Union-candidate nation.

The country’s chief prosecutor tried to close the AK Party, accusing it of anti-secular activity, but the Constitutional Court, in a decision announced in July, rejected the demand and only imposed a monetary fine on the party.

Ten years ago Turkey’s Constitutional Court shut down Erbakan’s then-ruling RP on the grounds that it sought to overthrow Turkey’s secular system and set up an Islamic state. The chief prosecutor of the Supreme Court of Appeals accused leaders of the AK Party, which split from Erbakan’s movement and came to power in 2002, of pursuing the same agenda. The prosecutor also sought a political ban for Gül.

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