Determination of the Most Charismatic Leader Using Analytic Hierarchy Process and Fuzzy TOPSIS: An Application in Turkey

The concepts of leaders and leadership have been dealt with by many different disciplines, such as psychology and sociology, with the fields of management and political science being foremost, and have become frequent subject matter of academic discussions and research. The first studies in this field took place at the beginning of the 20th century, with analysis of important personalities that changed the course of the history and shaped societies¡¯ futures with their extraordinary abilities and characteristics. It was predominantly these characteristics, as well as behavioral and situational approaches, that formed the basis of these first studies. The objective of this study is to determine which of the six presidents of the Republic of Turkey, who have served or are serving as Head of State, has more of the charismatic leadership characteristics, employing an interdisciplinary methodology in which multi-criteria decision-making methods and techniques are used. Within this context, the traits that a leader and a charismatic leader should have were determined, the weights of these traits were calculated using the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP), the calculated weights were used in the Fuzzy TOPSIS method, and the presidents were analyzed from the perspective of charismatic leadership. The results obtained support the predictions made before the study was begun. It was determined that Turgut Ozal, who was the 8thPresident of Republic of Turkey, is the most charismatic leader among the selected presidents. The concepts of leaders and leadership have been dealt with by many different disciplines, such as psychology and sociology, with the fields of management and political science being foremost, and have become frequent subject matter of academic discussions and research. The first studies in this field took place at the beginning of the 20th century, with analysis of important personalities that changed the course of the history and shaped societies¡¯ futures with their extraordinary abilities and characteristics. It was predominantly these characteristics, as well as behavioral and situational approaches, that formed the basis of these first studies. The objective of this study is to determine which of the six presidents of the Republic of Turkey, who have served or are serving as Head of State, has more of the charismatic leadership characteristics, employing an interdisciplinary methodology in which multi-criteria decision-making methods and techniques are used. Within this context, the traits that a leader and a charismatic leader should have were determined, the weights of these traits were calculated using the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP), the calculated weights were used in the Fuzzy TOPSIS method, and the presidents were analyzed from the perspective of charismatic leadership. The results obtained support the predictions made before the study was begun. It was determined that Turgut Ozal, who was the 8th President of Republic of Turkey, is the most charismatic leader among the selected presidents.