Milestones in Turkish public relations history

Public Relations Review 39 (2013) 91–100

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Public Relations Review

Milestones in Turkish public relations history

A. Banu Bıc¸ akc¸ ı ∗, Pelin Hürmeric¸ 1

Yeditepe University, Faculty of Communication, Department of Public Relations and Publicity, ˙

Istanbul, Turkey

a r t i c l e i n f o

Key words:

Public relations history

Turkey

Public relations models

a b s t r a c t

This study aims to mention the most important events, cases and names that have had

an impact on the public relations profession in Turkey within historically-divided devel￾opmental periods between 1920 and 2012. While forming the historical periods into

sub-phases, socio-political and economical contexts are considered. Three separate periods

are named: antecedents, emergence and developmental. Concerning these periods, the

applicability of Grunig and Hunt’s (1984) four models of PR is discussed within a Turkish

context, and it is concluded that the typology does not totally fit into Turkish PR history.

© 2013 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction

Public relations (PR) as a profession is not understood and practiced the same way in the world (Valentini, 2009); the

development of the profession is affected by several factors, such as the culture, politics, economics, media systems and the

level of activism (Grunig, Grunig, & Dozier, 2002). When Turkish PR history is under examination, it is natural to consider

all the contextual factors that have potential influence over the profession.

There are four different approaches related to the initiation of PR history in Turkey. Erdogan ˘ (2006) mentions PR in ancient

Turkish civilizations and nations starting from the Orkhon Inscriptions (BC 8th century), and similar approaches indicate

that there have been some intermediary stages in history before the modern PR periods (Kadıbes¸ egil, 2010; Kazancı, 2005;

S¸ anlı, 2008). Another approach states that the PR history in Turkey starts in the form of political PR, at the foundation of

the Turkish Republic, with the launching and propagation of systematic and planned reforms led by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk

(˙

Is¸ ler, 2007). A third approach claims, a provision about the PR of the police in Celal Bayar’s 1946 government program, as

the beginning (Okay & Okay, 2002). Finally, the most common historical foundation in literature is the establishment of the

State Planning Organization (DPT) in the 1960s (Asna, 1997; Görpe & Yüksel, 2011). Since PR is regarded as a phenomenon

of a democratic society (Hiebert, 2005; Sharpe & Pritchard, 2004; Tampere, 2010; Tench & Yeomans, 2009), pre-republican

involvements have not been discussed in this paper; milestones in every stage of development of the profession from the

foundation of the Anatolia Agency in 1920 to the present have been considered. Due to a lack of any periodization regarding

the history of Turkish PR in the literature, this study makes an attempt to fill in this gap as well.

The objective of this paper is not to narrate the entire story of PR in Turkey, but to mention the most important events,

cases and names that have had an impact on the profession within historically-divided developmental periods. Concerning

these periods, the applicability of (Grunig & Hunt, 1984) four models of PR is discussed within a Turkish context.

∗ Corresponding author. Tel.: +90 216 5780603; fax: +90 216 5780646.

E-mail addresses: [email protected], [email protected] (A.B. Bıc¸ akc¸ ı), [email protected] (P. Hürmeric¸).

1 Tel.: +90 216 5780838; fax: +90 216 5780646.

0363-8111/$ – see front matter © 2013 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.pubrev.2012.12.003