Gulan: the three main factors for defining the identity of any nation are literature, culture, and history. And the relation of the three describes the dimension that the nation is heading towards. In your opinion, to what extent is a charismatic leader needed for combining these three factors to react in a positive matter so as to provide success and bright future for the nation?

Abowitz: a charismatic leadership is needed only in very limited roles and with check in the balances of his or her powers because charismatic leaders can use her charisma for her good or for evil, so any leadership that is offering from the charismatic kind of straits is potentially one that people will follow willingly and so you can think of a very good and noble charismatic leaders or you can think of a very charismatic leader in degree. I think charismatic leadership is important, there must be kept and checked his balances with other branches of government as well as with other kinds of leadership that are involved in people more directly.

Gulan: if we consider combining of the three, we have some examples around the world about nations divided like North and South Korea, China and Taiwan, and as we had east and west of Germany during the Cold War, in all the three mentioned places though they have the same literature, culture and history, their governance styles are and were different. So do you agree that this is because of the ideology of their leaders who produced different and better examples from the same culture, history and literature?

Abowitz: I think leaders are chosen as a result of which of the ideology is in power, not the other way around. So whatever you have a society divided on a sort of basic political ideology, you are going to see leadership reflect that ideology. I think it is much more political movement, a kind of end up positioning certain leaders and others… not leaders make the things happen from the top.

Gulan: generally, every nation has got abilities but they tend to appear on the hand of their leaders to be successful, for example, we have Churchill in Britain and George Washington in America, and Ghandi in India. So to what extent are leaders important for unveiling the ability of his nation to reach sovereignty and independency?

Abowitz: it depends on how much unity there is and how much ideology in the nation. It depends on how much relative power that leader has related to other bodies in the nation and also it depends on the degree to which that leader can construct a vision and unify different elements. In a democratic nation a leader in many ways is only as good as the kind of coalitions she or he can build and the way he can find common ground with other ideologies. So I do think that you just keep consider the leader in his or her beliefs and in isolation comes over other factors.
Gulan: there is an expression saying history of a nation starts from its independency, and certainly in most of the cases a leader in a specific time achieves the independency for a nation. To what extent will the history of a leader reflect in the independency history of a nation?

Abowitz: if you look at somebody like George Washington as an example of an American leader, you could say that he is a reflective of the independence of the country as a whole, but you can also point to many other people like… I guess I do not agree with your basic assumption that one leader is responsible for the entire nation’s state ideological feature, and the history of any one person is responsible for an ideological kind of fact. In fact, George Washington would have not been in power, a general, electable to the first presidency of the United States, if he had not already reflected in an ideological agreement around independence from Britain, and a kind of constitutional democracy that had been emerging, and again he had been selected because there were more black people in the … and like people at the time and they were suppressed and not treated as citizens, there was plenty of circulating ideologies just wanted in power at the time, but the one that was in power selected all leaders that reflected their own interests, so I don’t think the leader is super fund the cultural context they emerge from.

Gulan: all the leaders that have been able to lead nations to victory have a kind of charismatic characteristics. So do you agree that the good aspect of a charismatic leader will further motivate the nation to step towards being more active for a brighter future and will also reflect in the very next generation after that period of time?

Abowitz: I do believe that a charismatic leader can move a country in a general direction of a particular ideology or beliefs and an ethical leader will move country in that direction if they feel like they will lead to greater happiness and wellbeing for the entire country not just few people. So charisma can be used for good or for evil and of course a charismatic leader can move a country or a nation state to a direction based on an ideology that they were elected upon and most leaders try to do that I think.

Gulan: in the nation building process which is the face of creating and establishing institutions for defining an independent and democratic nation, we see that in this process building institutions and developing democracy also require an elected president that is trusted by the people. How far can an elected president benefit from the national symbol so as to easily pass the sense to face of nation building process?

Abowitz: I think all part of the communication of leadership in all leaders use lots of symbols to communicate meanings and interpretations about nations and about political agendas. So yes I definitely agree that is a part of leadership particularly in the 21st century when we live in a very visual culture more than ever. I hear symbolic speech often more loudly than the other forms of communication that a leader might have.

The process of nation building is crucially important and we hope that the United States can be of assistance in this course which is an important and difficult one and we just hope we can support your effort and your work.