Necmettin Erbakan, leader of the Felicity Party (SP), has been hospitalized after suffering from a recurrent thrombophlebitis in his left foot.
Mustafa Yilmaz, advisor for Erbakan, the founding father of the "Milli Görüş", National View, a deep-rooted Islamist political movement in Turkey, said that the 85-year-old party leader did not have a worrisome health problem, but he suffered a recurrent thrombophlebitis.
The chief physician at Ankara's Güven Hospital also informed journalists on Erbakan’s condition. "Erbakan is in stable condition and his vitals are normal," the doctor said.
In 1997 the army forced the Islamist-led coalition of Erbakan to resign in what writers call "postmodern coup".
Born in 1926, Erbakan was the prime minister of Turkey from 1996 until 1997. In 1997, his ruling Welfare Party, or RP, was banned by the courts and he was barred from active politics. Despite being under a political ban, Erbakan acted as a mentor and informal advisor to former RP members who founded the Virtue Party, or FP, in 1997.
The FP was declared unconstitutional in 2001 and banned; by that time Erbakan's ban on political activities had ended and he founded the SP, of which he was the leader in 2003-2004 and again from 2010 onwards.
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