Erdogan was sentenced to a ten-month prison term for reciting a poem during a public address in the province of Siirt in 1997:

"The minarets are our bayonets the domes our helmets the mosques our barracks and the faithful our soldiers."

"One thing that I can not digest, if the skies and the ground were to open against us. If floods and volcanoes were
to burst upon us, we are those who are proud with the Iman of our ancestors, they never kneeled down
to frightening things any day, deeds of glory, deed of Anatolia, from Malazgirt til Canakkale, faith
impenetrable to fortresses, our ancestors rushing from one victory to another, this is unity and togetherness."

Poem by Ziya Gökalp