Leadership in Terrorist Organizations: An Analysis of Left Wing Terrorist Organizations in Turkey

One of the least studied topics in the terrorism literature is leadership in terrorist organizations. Available information in the literature on leaders of terrorist organizations is mostly about top leaders. That is, the information on leaders is usually limited with life stories and some demographic characteristics of the top leader(s). With this fact in mind, the main purpose of this study is to describe background characteristics of Turkish left wing terrorists, identify similarities and differences in the background characteristics of terrorist leaders and other terrorists, and analyze factors that are significant in terms of becoming leaders in the terrorist organizations. This study is based on secondary data analysis of records from members of Turkish left wing terrorist groups. Data utilized in this study were collected through interviews conducted with terrorist prisoners and their court files. The sample size was 1,077 records, out of which fifty subjects identified themselves as leaders. Findings revealed statistically significant differences between leaders and other terrorists in Turkish left wing terrorist organizations. In addition, the logistic regression analysis revealed several factors discriminating between leaders and other terrorists