Mustafa Kemal Atatürk’s Leadership and Communication Skills

Abstract

Leadership refers to the ability and capacity to direct, inspire and influence individuals or groups to achieve a common goal. However, leadership is a multifaceted concept that covers a wide range of qualities, behaviors and communication skills exhibited by individuals who are in a position of authority and naturally assume the leadership role. Communication skills are the ability to effectively and efficiently convey information, thoughts, ideas and feelings to others through verbal, non-verbal, written or visual elements. The combination of these components brings success in both personal and social interactions. One of the factors behind the success of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, who built a modern, democratic and secular nation-state from the ruins of the Ottoman Empire, is that he had both leadership and effective communication qualities. Atatürk has always been an example to both his nation and the world with these qualities. These talents of his were instrumental in shaping modern Turkey, in putting forward the vision of the nation, in implementing bold reforms, in building a state after struggles and in instilling a sense of national unity and solidarity. Turkish people has made him a national hero while being respected by the world. The aim of this study is to examine the relationship between Mustafa Kemal Atatürk's intellectual, political, charismatic, transformative, democratic and autocratic leadership types and his communication skills. In order to determine the above-mentioned characteristics, firstly, Atatürk's life and some of the revolutions he made were included. Then, in order to determine his leadership characteristics, his actions in the context of leadership theories were discussed. Afterwards, some of their behaviours were examined within the scope of basic communication skills in order to understand their communication skills. In the study, the descriptive research method, which is a method that aims to reveal the relationships between events by evaluating existing or past information in line with standards, was used. As a result of the examination, it was concluded that Atatürk had all of the basic leadership qualities and effective communication skills.