ABSTRACT
The incorporation of religious actors into state institutions constituted a marked continuity between the military regime and the Motherland Party (MP) governments. During the MP governments, conservative politicians obtained positions that could potentially influence cultural politics. The MP governments included a conservative faction—part of which was Korkut ozal's team from the National Salvation Party (NSP)—within the government and continued the close relationship between the Hearth and the state. The NSP was recognized as a legitimate political actor in Turkish politics, and Necmettin Erbakan's party used its ministries and governmental agencies to create patronage networks, which survived into the post-1980 period. Until the 1970s, center-right parties appealed to the periphery in Turkey without embracing an explicit religious political ideology. The leaders of the National Outlook Movement asserted independence from religious authority structures as their party gradually commanded more influence over significant segments of the Turkish population.