Tansu Çiller's Leadership Traits and Foreign Policy

Year 2012, Volume: 17 Issue: 3, 29 - 50, 01.10.2012

Barış Kesgin

Abstract

In the post-Cold War era, from 1993 to 1996, Tansu Çiller led Turkey through volatile political and economic crises. Moreover, she had a strong interest in foreign affairs and her leadership attracted attention from abroad as she was a female prime minister of a predominantly Muslim nation. Much like the general lack of interest in psychological factors in Turkish foreign policy, there is little research on personality and its impact on Turkeyıs foreign affairs. In this paper, Çiller’s leadership is systematically studied by utilising one of the most prominent methods of leadership assessment: leadership traits analysis. This paper first profiles Tansu Çiller as prime minister and then compares her to other Turkish leaders in the post-Cold War era. Its findings suggest that Çiller’s high in-group bias and high distrust mark her leadership and foreign policy behaviour. The paper highlights the significance of personalities in foreign policy making and calls for systematic accounts of this effect on Turkeyıs foreign policy.

Keywords

Profiling political leaders, at-a-distance assessment, leadership traits analysis, Tansu Çiller, prime ministers and Turkish foreign policy.

References

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• The two exceptions are Yeşim Arat, “A Woman Prime Minister in Turkey: Did It Matter?”, Women and Politics, Vol. 19, No. 4 (1998); and Ümit Cizre, “Tansu Çiller: Lusting for Power and Undermining Democracy”, in Heper and Sayarı (eds.), Political Leaders and Democracy in Turkey, Lanham, Maryland, Lexington Books, 2002. Arat focuses on gender and politics; Cizre approaches to Çiller’s leadership in general and given the theme of the Heper and Sayarı volume on leadership and democracy.
• This is well beyond the 5,000 words suggested by Hermann for an accurate leadership traits profile of a leader.
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• Quoted in MacLean’s, “The Other New Woman PM”.
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• 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.
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• Interview with PBS (Public Broadcasting Company, USA), 18 April 1995.
• Arat, “A Woman Prime Minister in Turkey”, p. 12. Arat also observes that Çiller ‘justified’ her militarism, or more specifically her hawkish policies on the Kurdish problem, with reference to being a mother, Arat, “A Woman Prime Minister in Turkey”, p.16. 57 Ibid., p. 11.
• BBC Summary of World Broadcasts, “Premier Says Flags and Soldiers ‘Must Go’ from Disputed Islet”, 30 January 1996.
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• “Prime Minister Warns Armenia of War if “One Inch” of Nakhichevan Harmed”, Agence France-Presse, 4 September 1993.
• Arat, “A Woman Prime Minister in Turkey”, p. 11.
• Hermann, “Assessing Leadership Traits”.
• Ibid., Hermann reports that 87 heads of state from around the world have an average Task Focus score of .590 with a low of .460 and a .710 for the highest score.
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• According to Hasan Kösebalaban, this is the single-issue area Çiller had control over free of the military’s involvement. Hasan Kösebalaban, Turkish Foreign Policy: Islam, Nationalism, and Globalization, Palgrave Macmillan, 2011, pp. 130-132.