Understanding the Role of Leadership Styles of Erdogan and Merkel in Sustainability of Turkey-European Union Relations: A Leadership Trait Analysis

Abstract

This study aims to understand the role of the leadership styles of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and German Chancellor Angela Merkel in European Union-Turkey relations by conducting a Leadership Trait Analysis (LTA), which takes into account the leaders’ personalities in foreign policy. The article makes use of the verbal records of the two leaders regarding the bilateral relations between their countries and the European Union. The results unveil that the two leaders’ personal characteristics bear similarities to a considerable extent; i.e., both leaders are sceptical in inter-personal relations, discernibly intuitive, self-confident and so forth. The study suggests that those personal traits of the leaders which have occasionally outweighed crude rationality have been some of the important factors enabling the sustainability of relations between Turkey and the EU against all odds.

Personalized Politics, Presidentialized Systems, and Migration. (c2022)

“…As mentioned early on in Chapter One, the purpose of this thesis is to investigate the relationship between migration policy and the characteristics of personalized politics, warranted by Merkel and Erdogan's leadership traits and the relative constitutional allocations of executive power in their respective countries. The following is a presentation and discussion of the findings produced by Kutlu et al (2021) in their analysis of Merkel and Erdogan's leadership traits and their impact of EU-Turkey relations.…”