1977 Turkish general election in the context of "National Salvation Party"

The Nationalist Movement Party, or alternatively translated as Nationalist Action Party (Turkish: Milliyetçi Hareket Partisi, MHP), is a far-right, ultranationalist political party in Turkey. The party is neo-fascist and has been linked to violent paramilitaries and organized crime groups. The party's youth wing is the Grey Wolves (Bozkurtlar) organization, which is also known as the "Nationalist Hearths" (Ülkü Ocakları) which played one of the biggest roles during the political violence in Turkey in the 1970s.

The party was formed in 1969 by former Turkish Army colonel Alparslan Türkeş, who had become leader of the Republican Villagers Nation Party (CKMP) in 1965. He founded the party after criticizing the Republican People's Party (CHP) for moving too far away from the nationalist principles of their founder Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, claiming that he would not have founded the MHP had the CHP not deviated from Atatürk's ideology. The party mainly followed a Pan-Turkist and Turkish nationalist political agenda throughout the latter half of the 20th century. The MHP won enough seats in the 1973 and 1977 general election to take part in the "Nationalist Front" governments during the 1970s. The party was banned following the 1980 coup, but reestablished with its original name in 1993. After participating in a coalition government, in the 2002 general election, the MHP fell below the 10% election threshold and lost all of its parliamentary representation after the newly formed Justice and Development Party (AKP) won a plurality.

Halil Turgut Özal (13 October 1927 – 17 April 1993) was a Turkish politician, bureaucrat, engineer and statesman who served as the president of Turkey from 1989 to 1993. He previously served as the prime minister of Turkey from 1983 to 1989 as the leader of the Motherland Party. He was the deputy prime minister of Turkey in the military government of Bülend Ulusu between 1980 and 1982.

After working briefly at the World Bank in the United States and as a university lecturer, Özal became the general secretary and later the leader of the main miners' trade union of Turkey in 1979, serving as a chief negotiator during large-scale industrial action in 1977. He unsuccessfully stood for Parliament in the 1977 general election as a National Salvation Party (MSP) candidate from İzmir. In 1979, he became an undersecretary to Prime Minister Süleyman Demirel's minority government until the 1980 military coup. As an undersecretary, he played a major role in developing economic reforms, known as the 24 January decisions, which paved the way for greater neoliberalism in the Turkish economy. After the coup, he was appointed Deputy Prime Minister of Turkey responsible for the economy in Bülend Ulusu's government and continued to implement economic reforms. He resigned in 1982 following disagreements over economic policy.