Leadership Traits of Turkey's Islamist and Secular Prime Ministers

Abstract

Leaders are influential in Turkish politics; since early Republican years under Atatürk and İnönü, the dominance of omnipotent leaders continued, if not escalated, under democratic elections. Menderes or Demirel or Erbakan, and presently Erdoğan, each leader assumed office with different personal and political backgrounds, worldviews, and personality characteristics. Nonetheless, a systematic study of political leaders in Turkish politics and foreign policy has rarely been a concern to scholars of Turkey. This lack of attention to Turkey's political leaders affects not only a nuanced understanding of its domestic politics but also its foreign policy. How do Turkish leaders' idiosyncratic traits affect their politics? How does the common phrase “secular and religious leaders” capture differences among Turkey's leadership? Utilizing a method of leadership assessment at-a-distance, this piece provides answers to such questions with respect to foreign policy profiles of all post-Cold War prime ministers of Turkey. It illustrates that Turkish leaders have distinct leadership traits but cannot be reduced to “seculars” and “Islamists.”

Acknowledgements

The author thanks Cengiz Erişen, Esra Çuhadar, Binnur Özkeçeci-Taner, all the participants to the workshops hosted by TOBB University of Economics and Technology in Ankara, and anonymous reviewers, as well as Jessica Epstein and Christina Xydias. In addition, thanks are due to Juliet Kaarbo, Philip Schrodt, and Brent Steele for their support. Finally, the author is grateful to Social Science Automation for making ProfilerPlus available.

Notes

Yavuz and Özcan, “Crisis In Turkey: The Conflict of Political Languages.”

Yavuz, Secularism and Muslim democracy in Turkey, 98.

Not all Turkish leaders have had the same level of interest in foreign policy. Experience and interest/training in foreign policy were employed as measures in earlier political leadership studies but are not in current at-a-distance assessment of leadership: see, Hermann, “Explaining Foreign Policy Behavior Using the Personal Characteristics of Political Leaders.”

Obviously, Erdoğan did not assume an office in government until he was elected to parliament after a by-election in the province of Siirt in March 2003. Here, the reference is to Erdoğan's party ascending to government in the aftermath of November 2002 elections and Erdoğan's capacity to influence foreign policy as the party chairperson.

Heper and Sayarı (eds.), Political Leaders and Democracy in Turkey. In addition to Sayarı's introduction and Heper's concluding remarks, included in this book are chapters on Atatürk, İsmet Inönü, Celal Bayar, Adnan Menderes, Süleyman Demirel, Bülent Ecevit, Necmettin Erbakan, Alparslan Türkeş, Turgut Özal, Mesut Yılmaz, and Tansu Çiller.

Demir (ed.), Türk dış politikasında liderler: süreklilik ve değişim, söylem ve eylem. This edited book contains studies of Adnan Menderes, Süleyman Demirel, Bülent Ecevit, Necmettin Erbakan, Alparslan Türkeş, and Turgut Özal.

Görener and  Uçal, “The Personality and Leadership Style of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan: Implications for Turkish Foreign Policy.” A forthcoming study of Tansu Çiller by the author would be another contribution to this research: Kesgin, “Leadership Traits and Foreign Policy of Tansu Çiller.” These two, among many others, represent a new interest developed in leadership and Turkish foreign policy: Ak, “Liderlik Profili Analizi ve Dış Politika: Turgut Özal ve Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.” Kesgin, “Political Leadership and Foreign Policy in Post-cold War Israel and Turkey.” Kesgin, “How Do ‘Secular’ and ‘Religious’ Leaders Shape Foreign Policy Behavior Towards the United States?” Özdamar, “Dış Politika Karar Alımı Sürecinde Lider Merkezli Yaklaşım: Akılcı Tercih Kuramı ve Türkiye'nin Irak Savası’na Katılmama Kararı.” In addition, on a broader scale than a specific interest in personality, some research now looks at the role of psychological factors in Turkish foreign policy-making: see, Erişen and Kesgin, “Dış Politika ve Psikolojik Unsurlar: Türk-Yunan İlişkilerinin Analizi.”

See, for instance, a literature about the Islamization of Turkey's foreign policy: among others Bird, “The Impact of Political Islam on Turkish Foreign Policy: Myth or Reality?” Oğuzlu, “Middle Easternization of Turkey's Foreign Policy: Does Turkey Dissociate from the West?” Sasley, “Foreign Policy Variation and Islamist Governments in Turkey: From Neglect to Advocacy.”

Cited in Byman and Pollack, “Let Us Now Praise Great Men: Bringing the Statesman Back In.”

Snyder, Bruck, and Sapin, Foreign Policy Decision Making Hudson, “Foreign Policy Analysis: Actor-Specific Theory and the Ground of International Relations.” In stark contrast, the assumptions of classical and structural realism run counter to this claim. Then, neo-classical realism engages with the individual level more so than its classical and structural variants; there is a great opportunity for interaction between neo-classical realism and political leadership studies. However, presently, this remains quite limited. For some short discussion, see Renfro, “Presidential Decision-Making and the Use of Force.”

Hermann, “Explaining Foreign Policy Behavior Using the Personal Characteristics of Political Leaders,” 12.

Hudson, “Foreign Policy Analysis: Actor-Specific Theory and the Ground of International Relations.”

Here, “Foreign Policy Analysis” refers to the academic study of foreign policy as a subfield of International Relations. For a review, see Levy, “Political Psychology and Foreign Policy.” Also, see Erişen, “An Introduction to Political Psychology for International Relations Scholars.”

Hermann, “When Leader Personality Will Affect Foreign Policy: Some Propositions.” Schafer, “Issues in Assessing Psychological Characteristics at a Distance: An Introduction to the Symposium.” Winter et al. “The Personalities of Bush and Gorbachev Measured at a Distance: Procedures, Portraits, and Policy.”

Winter, “Personality and Foreign Policy: A Historical Overview of Research.” Winter, “Personality and Political Behavior.”

Major exceptions would include: Feldman and Valenty (eds.), Profiling Political Leaders: Cross-cultural Studies of Personality and Behavior. Malici and Buckner, “Empathizing with Rogue Leaders: Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Bashar al-Asad.”

Young and Schafer, “Is There Method in Our Madness? Ways of Assessing Cognition in International Relations.” Other techniques, Young and Schafer identify are operational code analysis, image theory, and cognitive mapping. For recent reviews about leaders' cognition, see Preston, “Leadership and Foreign Policy Analysis”; also, see, Rosati and Miller, “Political Psychology, Cognition, and Foreign Policy Analysis.”

Dyson, The Blair Identity: Leadership and Foreign Policy. Dyson, “‘Stuff Happens’: Donald Rumsfeld and the Iraq War.” Dyson and Lorena Billordo, “Using Words as Data in the Study of the French Political Elite.”

Hermann, “Assessing Leadership Style: Trait Analysis.”

Ibid., 181.

Ibid., 182.

Kaarbo and Hermann, “Leadership Styles of Prime Ministers: How Differences Affect the Foreign Policymaking Process.”

Hermann, “Assessing Leadership Style: Trait Analysis,” 192.

Ibid., 197.

Ibid., 183.

Dyson, “Personality and Foreign Policy: Tony Blair's Iraq Decisions.” Here, Dyson reports scores for all the seven personality traits in LTA; however, in his discussion he focuses exclusively on these three traits.

Ibid., 303.

These individuals are: President George W. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, Secretary of State Colin Powell, Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, and Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz.

Shannon and Keller, “Leadership Style and International Norm Violation: The Case of the Iraq War.”

Rasler, Thompson, and Chester, “Foreign Policy Makers, Personality Attributes, and Interviews: A Note on Reliability Problems.”

Hermann, “On ‘Foreign Policy Makers, Personality Attributes, and Interviews: A Note on Reliability Problems’.”

Hermann “Assessing Leadership Style: Trait Analysis,” 211.

Mahdasian, “State, trait, or design? A critical examination of assumptions underlying remote assessment.”

While it is possible that some content may be lost in translation, earlier studies indicate that translation was not an issue in profiling leaders. Hermann reports that there was a high degree of correlation between the profiles of a leader coded in the original and translated languages.

Word counts for each Turkish leader are as follows: Demirel, 19357; Çiller, 27402; Yılmaz, 18162; Erbakan, 10147; Ecevit, 34843; Gül, 6799; Erdoğan (till 2010), 100482. Notably, the Erdoğan profile is based on almost double the word count in Görener and Uçal “The Personality and Leadership Style of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan: Implications for Turkish Foreign Policy.”

One must note that leadership traits and operational code analyses differ in their preference of the type of material used for assessing political leaders: respectively, they use spontaneous and scripted materials. For a discussion about the contradictory conclusions about the utility of scripted (prepared) and spontaneous statements in profiling leaders, see Mahdasian, “State, trait, or design?” and Renfro, “Presidential Decision-Making and the Use of Force.”

Because opening statements in press conferences are often prepared remarks, these are omitted from the analysis. Only the “Q and A” parts of press conferences are coded.

An approach also adopted by Astroff, “Fear of Heights: Foreign Policy Decision-Making in the Israeli–Syrian Conflict, 1988–2001” and Crichlow, “Idealism or Pragmatism? An Operational Code Analysis of Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres”; though, both collected only a sample of leaders' speeches or interviews.

Social Science Automation (Columbus, OH: 2008).

The programming details of ProfilerPlus are beyond the focus and interest of the present study.

This list excludes Erdal İnönü, who served as acting Prime Minister for about a month after Süleyman Demirel was selected as president and until Tansu Çiller's accession to Demirel's seat in the True Path Party and then in the coalition. With the exception of governments under Gül and Erdoğan, all governments were coalitions.

Robins, Suits and Uniforms: Turkish Foreign Policy since the Cold War.

Here, primarily, the role of the military in making Turkey's foreign policy is implied.

Kaarbo, “Power and Influence in Foreign Policy Decision Making: The Role of Junior Coalition Partners in German and Israeli Foreign Policy.” Özkeçeci-Taner, The Role of Ideas in Coalition Government Foreign Policymaking: The Case of Turkey Between 1991 and 2002.

The author wishes to thank Binnur Özkeçeci-Taner for highlighting this point.

It is worth noting that the average profiles of Turkish Prime Ministers were calculated from their monthly scores, likewise the average profile of a Turkish Prime Minister was calculated from all available scores for 218 months. As one would expect, when leaders speeches are aggregated to a single document and their profile is assessed from this document, there might be some differences in their leadership styles compared to the method used here. For instance, Erbakan's self-confidence score drops from 0.502 to 0.261 when all his foreign policy relevant speeches are aggregated and a single score is calculated for him.

Çiller's distrust of others score is not significantly higher than the average score; yet, if Erbakan (with a score more than two standard deviations higher than the mean) is an outlier in this trait, then Çiller's distrust of others becomes more significant.

Interview with Public Broadcasting Company (April 18, 1995).

Arat, “A Woman Prime Minister in Turkey: Did It Matter?” In the meantime, Arat also observes that Çiller “justified” her militarism, or more specifically her hawkish policies on the Kurdish problem, with reference to being a mother (ibid., 16).

On the domestic front, Çiller's approach to the fight against the PKK would be another example.

“Premier Says Flags and Soldiers ‘Must Go’ from Disputed Islet” (BBC Summary of World Broadcasts, January 30, 1996).

Civaoğlu, “Kardak'ta derin kulis.”

Davutoğlu, “Turkey's Zero-Problems Foreign Policy”; Davutoğlu, “Turkey's Foreign Policy Vision: An Assessment of 2007.”

“Without Borders,” Al Jazeera network (November 16, 2005).

Hermann et al. “Who Leads Matters: The Effects of Powerful Individuals.”

Schafer, “Issues in Assessing Psychological Characteristics at a Distance: An Introduction to the Symposium.”