Browsing by Subject "Presidents--Turkey."

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Open Access
Celal Bayar and political leadership, 1937-1960
(2013) Yiğit, Ahu
This dissertation sets its objective as studying Celal Bayar‟s leadership from 1937 to 1960 in order to present the portrait of Bayar as a political leader. The interactive approach is employed to structure this analysis. In line with this approach, external and internal resources of Bayar‟s leadership are defined. External resources are considered with regard to institutional and non-institutional aspects. The non-institutional resources referred to are the main characteristics of economy, of international relations and of political regime in 1937-1960. Institutional aspect of Bayar‟s leadership in 1937-1960 is studied with regard to executive offices he held. With regard to the internal resources of leadership, the effects of certain life experiences on Bayar‟s politics and his understanding of major political concepts such as democracy and secularism are discussed. Primary and secondary resources, as well as interviews with his close circle provide the material for this study. In the conclusion part, the impact of certain internal resources on his leadership, such as his commitment to the main principles of the Republican regime is acknowledged but it is pointed out that external resources, such as Atatürk‟s trust in him, had a greater impact on his leadership. It is also observed that the portrait of Bayar as a political leader falls in a category in between a state elite and a political elite. Regarding the interactive approach, it is concluded that under non-institutionalized regimes, the institutional offices lose their defining characteristics on leadership and that other resources such as the leader‟s relations with other leaders and his/her interpretation of political office gains extra emphasis.
Open Access
Presidents, the state and "democracy" in Turkey the ideas and praxis of Süleyman Demirel
(2010) İçener, Zeyneb Çağlıyan
This study aims to analyze the “statist” role that a president in the Turkish parliamentary system may play in maintaining a viable democracy, drawing on Giovanni Sartori’s bidimensional democracy theory and Alan Siaroff’s classification based on assessments of the nature of presidents. This study firstly discusses how under certain circumstances presidents come to have more powers in Turkey. It is argued that with the 1982 Constitution the president may assume a “corrective” role, despite lacking the legitimacy of popular elections, through benefiting from the vagueness of Article 104 of the Constitution. Unlike counterparts in some other parliamentary systems, the president in Turkey is not a symbolic and passive political actor but enjoys extensive powers. Focusing on the presidential term of Süleyman Demirel, this study secondly discusses how the president’s interpretations of his power and the way he puts this into practice may have had an impact on the maintenance of a viable democracy. The study suggests that Demirel developed a political line that prioritizes the effective functioning of the state, which he sees as indispensable for democracy. This explains the incentive behind Demirel’s active role as the president in protecting the political fabric of the state, which for him is directly linked with preserving the democratic nature of the regime. Despite coming from the circles of political elites, Demirel was able to set up a dialogue with the state elites when he was president, and thus was moderately successful in achieving a balance in the chronically troubled relationship between the state elites and the political elites.