Turkish court rejects appeal by Islamist ex-PM Erbakan

ANKARA, Turkey (Reuters) -- A Turkish court rejected on Wednesday an appeal by Necmettin Erbakan, an Islamist former prime minister, against a one-year jail sentence for "inciting hatred," Anatolian news agency said.

Erbakan, 74, was unseated as prime minister in 1997 under pressure from the secularist military and his Welfare party was subsequently banned.

A court sentenced him to jail in March for remarks made in a 1994 speech against the secularist establishment.

Anatolian quoted Erol Ocal, deputy prosecutor of the Court of Appeals, as saying: "Every issue involved with the foundation of the (conviction) was examined. Because there were no grounds to correct the sentence, the appeal was rejected.

The ruling coincided with the European Union's release of an outline of reforms that Turkey must make before talks on joining the bloc can begin.

The EU, which made overwhelmingly Muslim Turkey a candidate for membership in 1999, has urged it to improve its shaky human rights record, including checks of free speech.

London-based Amnesty International has said Erbakan would be a "prisoner of conscience" if he was jailed.

Erbakan is suspected of quietly directing the Islamist Virtue Party, founded just before the outlawing of Welfare in 1998, despite being banned from politics.

Virtue faces possible closure by the Constitutional Court later this month. It is charged with being a continuation of the Welfare Party and seeking to overthrow the secular order.

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