Do leaders really matter? The failure of ambitions in Turkish foreign policy

Abstract

The field of international relations is recently witnessing an inflation of attention toward political leaders and personalities. Yet, while political leaders mattered to understand foreign policy behaviors, the question is how much they do and under what conditions. This article argues that how leaders and personalities affect foreign policy is up to the variables that can be analyzed at the state and international levels. To illustrate this argument, I use the example of two strong, influential, and revisionist Turkish leaders: Turgut Özal and Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. The results point out that the main determinative on Turkish foreign policy on these leaders’ period is not their personality as argued. Instead, the main variables we should analyze are the presence domestic and international constraints such as dominant foreign policy actors, economic capacity, political polarization, and international conjunctures.