Turks Rally for Islamist Mayor After Sentence Is Upheld

As more than 10,000 supporters wildly cheered him on, Turkey’s most popular Islamist politician vowed to fight for his career Thursday, a day after an appeals court upheld a 10-month jail sentence against him for inciting religious hatred.

Istanbul Mayor Recep Tayyip Erdogan, appearing outside Istanbul City Hall, said his conviction was an attempt to weaken Turkey’s resurgent Islamist movement in the run-up to parliamentary elections in April.

The ruling, he said, was a “shameful page” in Turkey’s judicial history.

“The dark forces . . . that want to transform this country into a banana republic will not be able to stand in our way,” he said. “Allah’s will shall prevail.”

Erdogan, 44, was sentenced by a lower court in April for “provoking racial and religious hatred” by reciting a poem--one taught in Turkish schools--at a rally. As hundreds of riot police looked on Thursday, his supporters repeatedly chanted the incriminating lines: “The mosques are our barracks, the domes are our helmets, the minarets are our swords, and the faithful are our army.”

Under Turkish law, the appeals court ruling means that Erdogan will lose his mayoral seat and be barred from public office for life. Erdogan has just two weeks to ask the court to review its verdict. But legal experts say the court is unlikely to reverse the ruling.

The Erdogan case is widely seen as part of a sustained campaign spearheaded by Turkey’s rigidly pro-secular armed forces to snuff out the rise of political Islam. Last year, unyielding pressure from the military forced the resignation of the country’s first Islamist prime minister, Necmettin Erbakan.

Erbakan’s party, Turkey’s largest, was banned by the country’s Constitutional Court in January on charges of seeking to turn Turkey into an Islamic state during its year in power. Erbakan was barred from politics on similar charges for five years.

Until Erdogan’s court case, he had been widely tipped to lead Virtue, the new party under which the Islamists have regrouped. Opinion polls show that despite recent setbacks, the Islamists remain Turkey’s most popular movement.