Thousands bid final farewell to Former Turkish PM Erbakan

ISTANBUL (A.A) - Hundreds of thousands of mourners paid Tuesday their last respect to Necmettin Erbakan, one of Turkey's prominent political figures, who died at the age of 84.
Erbakan died in a hospital in Ankara on Sunday.
Erbakan, former prime minister of Turkey and leader of Felicity Party (SP), has been laid to rest in an Istanbul cemetery at a ceremony that was attended by thousands. 
Turkish President Abdullah Gul, Parliament Speaker Mehmet Ali Sahin, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and several other political figures as well as people from across Turkey joined the crowd to bid last farewell to Erbakan.
Erbakan served as the prime minister in a coalition government formed in 1996 by his Welfare Party (RP) and the True Path Party. In 1997, Turkey's top prosecutor charged the RP with being "a focal point for anti-secular activities" and he was forced to step down as the premier the same year. 
The party was shut down by country's Constitutional Court in January 1998, and the court banned Erbakan from politics for a period of five years.
Erbakan was charged in a case publicly came to be known in Turkey as "the Missing Trillion" and convicted of fraud in party records and hiding millions in cash reserves ordered to be seized after the RP was closed down. Court sentenced him to prison for 2 years and four months in March 2002.
His sentence was later commuted to home confinement before he was pardoned by Turkish President Abdullah Gul for health reasons in August 2008.