Sercan Canbolat, University of Connecticut, sercan.canbolat@uconn.edu
This is part of the MENA Politics Newsletter, Volume 3, Issue 1, Spring 2020. Download the PDF of this piece here.
In January 2009, then-Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan stormed out of a panel at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. “I will never come back to Davos after this,” he uttered in protest after sparring with Israeli President Shimon Peres. He kept his promise: Erdogan has not partaken in the forum since 2009. As Lisel Hintz notes, after the Davos incident, many Muslim and Arab audiences in addition to his domestic supporters referred to Erdogan as the “conqueror of Davos,” and increasingly viewed him as both a powerful regional leader and a protector of the Muslim world.[i]
Individual leaders have played an outsized role in Turkish politics. From the founding fathers like presidents Kemal Ataturk and Ismet Inonu to military general Kenan Evren to modern Islamist leaders such as Ahmet Davutoglu and Erdogan, Turkish politics is dominated by high-profile personalities. As powerful as individual-level factors can be, my research demonstrates that they are conditioned by audience effects. In my research, I focus on how foreign policy rhetoric by Turkey’s Islamist leaders is conditioned by audience type: domestic vs. international. Such bifurcation allows a specification of the effects of audience on rhetoric, while providing insight into otherwise puzzling divergences in positions articulated by Justice and Development Party (AKP) leaders.[ii]
This short essay draws on an at-a-distance analysis of the speeches Erdogan and former prime minister Ahmet Davutoglu gave in Turkey (in Turkish) and abroad (in English), I demonstrate that 1) leaders alter their foreign policy profile and political beliefs depending on the type of their audience; and 2) idiosyncrasies of individual leaders make more difference than any overarching Islamist political ideology. While the ‘automation turn’ in political psychology has addressed many challenges associated with the study of political leaders from a distance, such as the paucity and low quality of text corpora as data,[iii]automated at-a-distance analysis of verbal statements of political leaders to create leadership profiles has remained largely confined to English-language texts.[iv] To overcome this limitation, I employ a novel Turkish operational code analysis (TOCA) scheme, which is compatible with the Profiler Plus software and operational code analysis research program in the field of Foreign Policy Analysis (FPA).
The remainder of this essay consists of three parts. First, I explain TOCA and underscore its added value in the study of leaders and foreign policy decision-making in MENA. Second, I account for the need for, and significance of, factoring leader psychology in our understanding of Turkish politics and foreign policy. Lastly, I apply TOCA to illustrate how Turkish Islamists’ sometimes confoundingly contradictory foreign policy rhetoric is contextually dependent on the nature of their audiences.
Profiling Leaders in Turkish: Introducing a New Tool
Since the introduction of automated coding schemes for leadership profiling in 1998, FPA research using leadership trait analysis (LTA) and operational code analysis (OCA) has made great advances with an increasing volume of research from seven publications in 1998[v] to ninety-nine publications in 2019.[vi] The diminished coding costs of using automated coding schemes for LTA and OCA—which run on Profiler Plus[vii] and profilerplus.org—and advancements in the reliability and comparability of speech data played a major role in the development of leadership studies within the field of FPA.[viii]Nevertheless, this automatization process, which rests on the analysis of verbal statements of leaders to create leadership profiles, has remained largely constrained in terms of language of text as data because the coding schemes can only process English-language texts. By confining both the quality and quantity of available data, language-boundedness of the automatization efforts has hampered the application of automated leadership profiling techniques beyond the Anglosphere.
Such limitations also militate against the scope of FPA research because most people in the world do not speak English as their first language. According to Ethnologue’s projections, only 378 million of approximately 7.5 billion people speak English as their first language making up only five percent of the world population.[ix] The problem for automated leadership assessment tools and FPA in general is that many texts are not available in English. Neither machine translation applications, e.g., Google Translate, nor human translation offer a suitable solution, because of issues that render machine translation substandard and the cost of high-quality human translation exorbitant.
My colleagues and I recently developed a novel Turkish coding scheme for leadership analysis, called TOCA, to contribute to efforts in addressing the afore-mentioned void in Turkish studies.[x] TOCA allows future researchers to address novel empirical questions and to revisit established insights using a more rigorous and contextualized methodology. The TOCA provides a handy and pertinent tool to address the following research questions, which prove perennial in scholarly discussions of Turkey: 1) How do Turkish leaders’ idiosyncratic political beliefs influence their decision-making? 2) How do beliefs of Turkey’s secular leaders differ from those of political Islamists? 3) How do political beliefs of key decision-makers influence certain high-stakes Turkish foreign policy decisions such as the Cyprus issue, the second Gulf war, Syrian civil war, and the Kurdish issue?
There are three main utilities of TOCA and non-English coding schemes in general:[xi] 1) TOCA augments the size of Turkish text as data on which leadership profiles can be constructed; 2) TOCA is instrumental in generating more precise and contextualized profiles of Turkish leaders because they are predicated on leaders’ words in their native tongue; and 3) non-English coding schemes expand the scholarship on political leadership beyond the Anglo-North American core and contribute to the efforts in decentering the FPA and, by extension, the International Relations (IR) field.
Contributions of Leader Psychology in Understanding Turkish Politics
Since the establishment of the Turkish republic in 1923, most Turkish political leaders have come to power with a lofty vision. For instance, while Bulent Ecevit wanted to see a Turkey “where humanistic values had preeminence,” Suleyman Demirel sought to “create a Great Turkey.” Personalized tug-of-war between certain Turkish leaders, such as the Bulent Ecevit-Suleyman Demirel and Tansu Ciller–Mesut Yilmaz rivalries, has had far-reaching effects on the country. Heper and Sayari note that Turkish politics has always been “a stage for leader-based politics,” as the Islamic tradition exalts the role of a strong and charismatic leader in maintaining order, enables personalities to shape domestic politics and foreign policy.[xii] Kesgin argues that individual leaders, prime ministers, and now presidents have enjoyed both legal powers defined by the Turkish constitution and informal powers derived from their personality and charisma.[xiii] By focusing on certain decision-makers and their leadership traits in media coverage and framing of politics, the Turkish media also plays a key role in personalizing politics.[xiv]
The audience factor has become ever more rampant in populist and polarized political systems, with Turkey being one of the primary cases of this phenomenon.[xv] While the audience effect impinges upon Turkish leaders’ rhetoric in general, the effect may be more pronounced in the foreign policy realm due to its double-sided audience, that is domestic vs. international. For example, Erdogan’s foreign policy speeches in Turkish have been the most vitriolic and belligerent during critical electoral cycles such as the 2015 and 2018 general elections and the 2017 constitutional referendum. TOCA allows us to contrast leaders’ political beliefs when they deliver speeches in their native Turkish language at home with those delivered in English abroad in the same temporal domain.
Table 1 below depicts Davutoglu and Erdogan’s contrasting political belief scores conditioned by the audience effect, which are also compared to world and rogue leadership norming groups. First, Davutoglu’s political beliefs are akin to those of average world leaders when he addresses domestic audiences, but his speeches in English exhibit a regression in all of his beliefs placing his profile between mainstream and rogue leadership norming samples. While the decline is evident in all three beliefs, his perception of control score fell almost by half in his foreign policy speeches abroad. Unlike Erdogan, Davutoglu has a command of English and chose to speak in English when he was before foreign audiences instead of seeking translation help.
Second, Erdogan’s foreign policy profile abroad is like an average world leader as his three belief scores point to a more cooperative leadership in unison. His nature of political universe and strategic direction belief scores featuring his speeches in English are even higher than those of the average world leader. However, when he addresses domestic audience in Turkish, Erdogan views political universe and others in more negative terms and he is inclined to employ more aggressive strategies to accomplish foreign policy goals. In his domestic speeches, furthermore, Erdogan attributes more control to himself in managing foreign policy events vis-à-vis others. On the eve of most elections, Erdogan embraced hawkish foreign policy themes in his campaign speeches such as threatening the Syrian government and Kurds with military operations, but those themes are more pronounced in his domestic speeches in Turkish than in those targeting Western and Arab Spring-struck countries.[xvi]Erdogan’s following words back in 2012 as the Turkish premier are illustrative: “İnşallah biz en kısa zamanda Şam’a gidecek, Emevi Camii’nde namazımızı da kılacağız.” (God willing, we will go to Damascus very soon, and will pray in the Umayyad mosque, too).[xvii]
Table 1. Davutoglu and Erdogan’s master belief scores in English (E) and Turkish (T) materials compared to norming groups on state leaders[xviii]
Source: Own depiction.[xix]
While they hail from the same ideology and political party lines, the stark differences between Erdogan and Davutoglu conditioned by the audience type are notable. Table 1 above shows that while addressing domestic audiences, Erdogan employs harsher and more hawkish foreign policy rhetoric toward other countries. Yet, Erdogan switches to a much softer tone when he addresses foreign audiences in the same time frame and about the same topic. By contrast, Davutoglu’s speeches at home in Turkish are more dovish, while those in English have a more conflictual tone. Consistent with the results above, President Erdogan uses self-effacing language about himself populated by modest utterances such as “Kardeslerim, bu fakir hiçbir zaman Sultan olma gayretinde olmadı.” (My brothers, this destitute person (I) never tried to become a Sultan).[xx] As Cagaptay notices, the findings give further credence to “the effects of populism and audience” on Turkish leaders’ foreign policy rhetoric.[xxi]
The results lend support to the argument that there is no single monolith political Islamist leadership in foreign policy and individual leaders sometimes matter more than a presumed ideology of the ruling elite. This preliminary research also indicates the necessity and utility of factoring the audience effect in the study of political leaders and foreign policy. A quantitative content analysis of Erdogan and Davutoglu’s statements delivered in Turkey and abroad also suggests that political leaders are adept at projecting contrasting leadership profiles depending on their main audience. As Kesgin cautions, while the variability of personality traits can be a personality trait itself, further research is warranted to evaluate the validity of such argument.[xxii]
The preliminary findings from Erdogan and Davutoglu’s speeches before domestic and foreign audiences suggest this would be a fruitful line of research and contribute to our understanding of political leaders and their foreign policy decisions. In that sense, TOCA should be considered as a stepping-stone to opening novel research avenues in leadership studies and non-Western FPA. Specifically, future students of Turkish politics and foreign policy might work on such potentially statistically significant differences between English and Turkish text corpora and help disentangle the relationship between populism, audience effects, and decision-making in Turkish studies.
Canbolat Notes
[i] Hintz, Lisel. Identity Politics Inside Out: National Identity Contestation and Foreign Policy in Turkey. (New York: Oxford University Press 2018).
[ii] Ozdamar, Ozgur and Sercan Canbolat, “Understanding new Middle Eastern leadership: An operational code approach.” Political Research Quarterly 71, no. 1 (2018): 19-31.
[iii] Stephen G. Walker, Mark Schafer, and Michael D. Young, “Systematic Procedures for Operational Code Analysis: Measuring and Modeling Jimmy Carter’s Operational Code.” International Studies Quarterly 42, no. 1 (1998): 175-189.
[iv] Ozgur Ozdamar, Sercan Canbolat and Michael D. Young, “Profiling Leaders in Turkish.” In Forum “Coding in Tongues: Developing Non-English Coding Schemes for Leadership Profiling.” International Studies Review (2020) online first: https://doi.org/10.1093/isr/viaa001 (accessed 3/19/2020).
[v] Stephen G. Walker, Mark Schafer, and Michael D. Young, “Systematic Procedures for Operational Code Analysis: Measuring and Modeling Jimmy Carter’s Operational Code.” International Studies Quarterly 42, no. 1 (1998): 175-189.
[vi] Publication figures are compiled by the author from https://scholar.google.com/ (accessed 3/21/2020).
[vii] Nick Levine and Michael D. Young, “Leadership Trait Analysis and Threat Assessment with Profiler Plus.” Proceedings of ILC 2014 on 8th International Lisp Conference (2014): 50-59.
[viii] The coding schemes are available at Social Science Automation, https://socialscience.net/ (accessed 3/19/2020).
[ix] David M. Eberhard, Gary F. Simons, and Charles D. Fennig (eds.). 2020. Ethnologue: Languages of the World. Twenty-third edition. Dallas, Texas: SIL International. Online version: http://www.ethnologue.com (accessed 3/19/2020).
[x] Ozgur Ozdamar, Sercan Canbolat and Michael D. Young, “Profiling Leaders in Turkish.” In Forum “Coding in Tongues: Developing Non-English Coding Schemes for Leadership Profiling.” International Studies Review (2020) online first: https://doi.org/10.1093/isr/viaa001 (accessed 3/19/2020).
[xi] Klaus Brummer and et al., “Coding in Tongues: Developing Non-English Coding Schemes for Leadership Profiling.” International Studies Review (2020) online first: https://doi.org/10.1093/isr/viaa001 (accessed 3/19/2020).
[xii] Metin Heper and Sabri Sayari, (eds). Political Leaders and Democracy in Turkey. (Lanham, MD: Lexington
Books 2002).
[xiii] Baris Kesgin, “Turkey’s Erdogan: Leadership Style and Foreign Policy Audiences.” Turkish Studies 21, no. 1 (2020): 56-82.
[xiv] See the following works for further insights: Ali F. Demir, Turk Dis Politikasi’nda Liderler (Leaders in Turkish Foreign Policy). (Istanbul: Baglam Yayinlari 2007); Baris Kesgin, “Leadership Traits of Turkey’s Islamist and Secular Prime Ministers.” Turkish Studies 14, no. 1 (2013): 136-157.
[xv] See, for example, Oksan Bayulgen, Ekim Arbatli and Sercan Canbolat. “Elite Survival Strategies and Authoritarian Reversal in Turkey.” Polity 50, no. 3 (2018): 333-365 and Baris Kesgin, “Turkey’s Erdogan: Leadership Style and Foreign Policy Audiences.” Turkish Studies 21, no. 1 (2020): 56-82.
[xvi] Recep Tayyip Erdogan, “Trump Is Right on Syria. Turkey Can Get the Job Done.” New York Times January 7, 2019. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/07/opinion/erdogan-turkey-syria.html (accessed 3/22/2020).
[xvii] Translation my own. For English-language coverage of this speech, see: Hürriyet Daily News, “Premier vows to pray in Damascus mosque soon,” available at http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/premier-vows-to-pray-in-damascusmosque-soon-29505 (accessed 04/10/2020).
[xviii] The norming sample scores on rogue and average world leaders are courtesy of Stephen Benedict Dyson (personal communication, May 6, 2018) and Akan Malici (personal communication, April 5, 2018).
[xix] For the operationalization of variables used in this research, see the following: 1) Nature of Political Universe (P-1) Index: % Positive Other Attributions minus % Negative Other Attributions. Varying from -1 (the most conflictual) to +1 (the most cooperative); 2) Strategic Direction (I-1) Index = % Positive Self Attributions minus % Negative Self Attributions. Varying from -1 (the most belligerent) to +1 (the most cooperative); 3) Perception of Control (P-4) Index: Self Attributions divided by [Self Attributions plus Other Attributions]. Varying from 0 (the least self-control) to 1 (the most self-control). Source: Stephen G. Walker, Mark Schafer, and Michael D. Young, “Systematic Procedures for Operational Code Analysis: Measuring and Modeling Jimmy Carter’s Operational Code.” International Studies Quarterly 42, no. 1 (1998): 175-189.
[xx] English translation my own. For Turkish-language media coverage of this speech, see: Hürriyet Daily News “Erdoğan: Bu fakir hiçbir zaman sultan olmanın gayretinde olmadı” available at https://www.cnnturk.com/turkiye/erdogan-bu-fakir-hicbir-zaman-sultan-olmanin-gayretinde-olmadi (accessed 03/20/2020).
[xxi] Soner Cagaptay, The New Sultan: Erdogan and the Crisis of Modern Turkey. (London, UK: Bloomsbury Publishing 2020).
[xxii] Baris Kesgin, “Turkey’s Erdogan: Leadership Style and Foreign Policy Audiences.” Turkish Studies 21, no. 1 (2020): 56-82.