The coalition had been in government for four years, having been formed by the Social Democratic Populist Party, the CHP's predecessor.

The Democratic Left Party (DSP) also made significant gains at the expense of the CHP, which barely crossed the election barrier.

Investigative journalist Uğur Mumcu was assassinated on 24 January, while there was also an increase in the violence of the conflicts with the Kurdistan Workers' Party.

On 2 July, shortly before the Tansu Çiller government was about to receive a vote of confidence, thirty-seven people, mostly Alevis, who were in Sivas for the Pir Sultan Abdal festival, were burned to death by a radical Islamist group in the Madımak Hotel following a four-hour siege in what became known as the Sivas massacre.

As a national debate waged, Tansu Çiller's government stayed on, eventually agreeing with Mesut Yılmaz's Motherland Party (ANAP) to form a minority coalition in March 1996, some three months after the election.

He chose the latter, and the DYP switched allegiances to form Turkey's first Islamist government with the RP in June 1996.

The newly reformed CHP had withdrawn as junior partner of a four-year coalition with the DYP to contest an election on an agenda that boasted its Kemalist and centre-left history.