Country branding from a public relations perspective "The case of Turkey"

Country branding from the perspective of public relations, is an effort to build a common country branding communication strategy based on the combination of branding efforts and public relations methods in general. It is aimed to bring together the ideas and perspectives of the state, private sector, non-governmental organizations and academia on a common ground with a viable future vision. All actors do something with their own plans for Turkey branding, however, all the studies carried out cause different colors and confusion of these colors due to the different strategies and practices of institutions and organizations. In such an environment where unity and monophony cannot be created, the main goal is to bring together the public relations studies with the logic of an orchestra conductor and country branding data, and to turn them into rainbow colors that form a common whole despite the differences in their own harmony, beyond the color confusion. The harmonious unity that turns into a rainbow will unite the Turkish brand into a single whole and will tell the whole world about the beauty of the Turkish brand. Public relations reaches its goals by creating new discourses and practices by collaborating and unanimously communicating the idea or project to be given to the target audience, adopting them, including them, ensuring participation, determining policies and strategies, mapping, and by taking on the role of a communication-based mediator. With Turkey country branding and awareness around this effort, a communication management that shapes public relations practices will be realized. The branding of Turkey through communication management studies will bring along a preferred country with a high-value brand reputation, beneficial to the economy, encouraging more investment and production, as a factor that increases its competitiveness in the world. In this study, the communication dimension and the literature of country branding from the perspective of public relations were examined. In the research part, semi-structured in-depth interviews were conducted in order to determine the status of the state, private sector, non-governmental organizations and academia in Turkey regarding country branding. The results obtained from the semi-structured in-depth interviews were discussed and made recommendations to develop a common communication strategy. In addition, a communication model has been proposed. Keywords: Public relations, communication, branding, country branding.