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

The Welfare Party (Turkish: Refah Partisi, RP) was an Islamist political party in Turkey. It was founded by Ali Türkmen, Ahmet Tekdal, and Necmettin Erbakan in Ankara in 1983 as heir to two earlier parties, National Order Party (MNP) and National Salvation Party (MSP), which were banned from politics. The RP participated in mayoral elections at that time and won in three cities Konya, Şanlıurfa, and Van. Their vote percentage was approximately 5%.

The Welfare Party participated in the 1991 elections in a triple alliance with the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) and the Reformist Democracy Party (IDP). They gained 16.9% of the vote. They won 62 deputies to parliament, but 19 deputies of MHP (with founding Democratic Movement Party on 25 December 1991 and joining the MÇP on 29 December 1991) and 3 of IDP left the Welfare Party after the election. Their popular vote increased over the years until they became the largest party under Prime Minister Necmettin Erbakan in 1996. The coalition government of Erbakan was forced out of power by the Turkish military in 1997, due to being suspected of having an Islamist agenda.

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.

Necmettin Erbakan (29 October 1926 – 27 February 2011) was a Turkish politician and political theorist who served as the 23rd prime minister of Turkey from 1996 to 1997. He was pressured by the military to step down as prime minister and was later banned from politics by the Constitutional Court of Turkey for purportedly violating the separation of religion and state as mandated by the constitution.

The political ideology and movement founded by Erbakan, Millî Görüş, argues that Turkey can develop with its own power by protecting its religious values and moving forward with faster steps by rivaling the Western countries in favor of closer relations to Muslim countries. With the Millî Görüş ideology, Erbakan was the founder and leader of several prominent Islamic political parties in Turkey from the 1970s to the 2010s, namely the National Order Party (MNP), the National Salvation Party (MSP), the Welfare Party (RP), the Virtue Party (FP), and the Felicity Party (SP).

General elections were held in Turkey on 14 October 1973, on the same day as for the senate. The Republican People's Party (CHP) emerged as the largest party, winning 185 of the 450 seats with 33% of the vote. The Justice Party (AP) led by Süleyman Demirel, which had won a majority in the previous elections in 1969, lost over a third of its seats, winning just 149. This was a result of two new parties, the National Salvation Party and the Democratic Party, splitting the right-wing vote.

The CHP formed a government with the religious-oriented National Salvation Party on 26 January 1974. However, the government lasted only ten months before its fall.