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.

中文翻译：

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领导者真的重要吗？土耳其外交政策雄心的失败


最近，国际关系领域对政治领导人和人物的关注日益增多。然而，虽然政治领导人对于理解外交政策行为很重要，但问题是他们做了多少以及在什么条件下做了。本文认为，领导人和人物如何影响外交政策取决于可以在国家和国际层面进行分析的变量。为了说明这一论点，我使用了两位强大、有影响力的修正主义土耳其领导人的例子：图尔古特·厄扎尔和雷杰普·塔伊普·埃尔多安。研究结果指出，这些领导人时期土耳其外交政策的主要决定因素并不是他们所争论的个性。相反，我们应该分析的主要变量是存在的国内和国际约束，例如主导外交政策参与者、经济能力、政治极化和国际形势。