On Sunday, Turkey’s first “religious” prime minister, Necmettin Erbakan passed away. Today in Istanbul, his funeral was attended by thousands of mourners. Even though he was Prime Minister for just one year, Erbakan is being hailed by the current crop of Turkish leaders as the father of Islamic politics, the man who broke the Republican political mould in his homeland and ushered in a new way of governing. Born in (Sinop 29/10/1926), he trained to be an engineer, later becoming a teacher and eventually a politician. His views, initially clamped down upon by the secular military, now underpin the philosophies of Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Abdullah Gul, the present Prime Minister and President of Turkey.
Necmettin had a remarkable chart, which I shall look at now. He was a Sun sign Scorpio conjunct Venus just into Libra. This made him ambitious, yet popular, he would have had a wide circle of friends and admirers. His Moon was in glitzy, pompous Leo, he loved the limelight and his emotions would have been out there for all to see. Hugely determined and stubborn with no less than seven planets in fixed signs, this man would not stop until he achieved his dreams.
There are two points of focus to his chart, and in effect he had two careers, one as an engineer and one as a politician. If you look you can see them clearly. Mars sits in Taurus at the point of a t-square. Taurus is the sign of construction, and also at the point of an unusual Yod shaped configuration – that’s a lot of energy being concentrated and he had a constant flow of it pushing him forward. This man was always going to be a builder, a engineer (so appropriate with Sun in heavy Scorpio and Mars sextile Pluto – he designed German Leopard tanks), a constructor or things, of new ideas and philosophies (especially as one of the squares to Mars is from religious Jupiter in social, humanitarian, radical Aquarius). This would be emotionally important to him with the Moon opposite Jupiter square Mars. Feeding off that Mars by sextile quietly sitting by the side-lines was Pluto in Cancer. For all that Martian energy, there was a by-product of this construction; power and control (Pluto) of his homeland (Cancer).
At the other end of the chart, the base of the “Yod” I spoke of earlier (a Yod is normally made of a 60 degree sextile as a base with two 150 degree quincunx aspects feeding off into a point, but this one is 30 degree Semi-Sextile with two 165 degree Quindeciles – even more focused energy) is a Saturn/Mercury conjunction, also in Scorpio. Here is an administratively minded man with a deep, deep intellect and a searching mind. Trine this conjunction was radical Uranus in spiritual Pisces and square it was Neptune in Leo, another spiritual signature. Neptune was sextile that social Venus one of the bases of the Yod. Erbakan’s vision was a new radical, religious way of governing that would be socially acceptable in a previously secular society. That dream he fulfilled on 28th June 1996 when he became Prime Minister. At that time, Jupiter, representing his philosophies and beliefs was transiting through administrative Capricorn, was opposite his natal Pluto in Cancer and trine the Mars which glues the rest of his chart together. Transiting Sun was trine it’s own position and transiting Uranus going through it’s own sign of Aquarius was square natal Sun and sextile the Mercury/Saturn conjunction. The radical ideas and ethos and the chance to build a new way of governing in Turkey all came together in one glorious moment for him.
This is a steam roller of a chart, and it took the might of the military to knock this formidable man off his perch. His ideas still live on, and the lessons have been learnt by the students he taught. He mentored Gul and Erdogan and when they won power with the newly reformed AKP in 2002 and latterly in 2003, their strategy has been to weaken the military machine that derailed the founder of their philosophies. He was a man that divided opinions; adored by religious conservatives & despised by the Republicans and liberal minded.