Hayder Aliyev's Perspective of the Turkic World: A Qualitative Research on the Concept of Savior Leadership in Political Communication
Authors: Yilmaz Baha Ahmet , Gültekin Bilgehan , Babayeva-Shukurova Farahila , Ün Lütfullah 
Published: April 2024

Subject: Individuals, who form the building blocks of society, can play different roles within their structure. Although it has a controversial and comprehensive terminology, one of the most prominent roles is leadership. Leadership is a crucial role within society, often associated with authoritarian, participatory, and charismatic concepts. The leadership of Heydar Aliyev, the founding leader of Azerbaijan, is often referred to as savior leadership. Despite the Soviet Union's long rule, Azerbaijan quickly built its identity and gained independence in 1991. Various names have been used to describe his leadership style.

Purpose: In this regard, in the relevant study, the meaning categories related to the concept of savior leadership towards Haydar Aliyev will be determined and its relationship with this concept at the discourse level will be questioned. In this context, the summit declarations published regularly every year by the Cooperation Council of Turkic Speaking Countries (Turkic Council), which was established in 1991, constitute the sample of this study.

Method: In the study, an attempt was made to comparatively analyze Haydar Aliyev's relationship with savior leadership in the context of his discourses and policies, in the declarations of the council established under the leadership of Turkey in order to integrate the newly independent Turkic Republics in Central Asia and the Caucasus into each other and into the international system. In addition, while content analysis was conducted based on qualitative data to determine which research model they reflect in terms of their content and to what extent they meet the dialogical principles, qualitative content analysis was conducted based on thematic coding to describe the topics included in the papers. MAXQDA 20 package program was used while making the analyses.

Results: In the seven summit reports made between 1992-2002; Content analysis was conducted with thematic coding of regional and international integration, cultural integration, political integration and dialogue. As a result of the analysis, "One nation, two states", used by Haydar Aliyev for Turkey and Azerbaijan at the relevant summits, stands out as the most frequently used discourse under the theme of cultural integration. In addition, the Turkic World discourse, which the Republic of Azerbaijan sees in parallel with its own identity construction, is another prominent concept in regional and international integration. Under the theme of political integration, he underlined that Azerbaijan should develop friendly relations with both the region and other countries, and maintained its pro-peace attitude until the last moment, even in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, which started with Armenia's occupation of Azerbaijani lands in the early 1990s. This situation also shows us the importance Aliyev attaches to dialogue. As a result, as seen in the content analysis of the summit declarations, Haydar Aliyev displayed a common attitude with Turkish President Suleyman Demirel in the integration process of the Turkic World with a policy prioritizing the full independence of Azerbaijan, but due to both the Karabakh War and the difficulties experienced in Azerbaijani domestic politics afterward, Turkey and other The economic crisis that started in 1994 in the Turkic republics caused the targeted integration to be postponed to another period. In this process, it can be said that Haydar Aliyev gave priority to cultural integration towards the Turkish world.