Examining the contribution of the concept of corporate democracy to the participatory democracy in the case of Presidency: Between 2009 - 2013

This study aims to examine the contributions of corporate communication, which is increasing its importance as a concept, to the participatory democracy in the case of Presidency which is one of the pioneers of corporate communication among the state institutions. The study aims to answer the question "What is the contribution of corporate communication within the framework of technological developments in the case of Presidency?" The degree of people's participation to the governance, their awareness of their democratic rights, their satisfaction with the government institutions, the degree of their relationship with government, their confidence with the government institutions are examined in the study. Case study is employed in the study in order to grasp a deep understanding of citizens' perception of participatory democracy who applied to the Presidency. The applications to the Public Relations Directorate of the Corporate Communication Unit of the Presidency in person, with petition and with e-mail between 2009-2013 had been determined with scale exemplification method. The data that had been gathered with qualitative data analysis, and the content had been interpreted through descriptive analysis method. The data had been interpretered by categorizing according to the sub-problems of the study. There are seven categories which are namely: Citizens' ideas about the basic concepts such as "democracy" and "participatory democracy"; whether they perceive applying to the Presidency as a democratic right; the degree of the personality of the 11th President Abdullah Gül for citizens' application to Presidency; their expectations from the government; the confidence between the citizens and the government; the quality of the service provided by the Presidency; the communication tools used for information gathering. According to the study; citizens' ideas are in line with participatory democracy, they apply to the Presidency because they see it as a democratic right, President Abdullah Gül's personality plays an important role, people expressed negative thoughts about other government agencies. According to the results of this study that the "conscience and awareness" required for participatory democracy is highly developed among the participants; Presidency's services play an important role in the development of participatory democracy and it is successful in corporate communication. Besides, citizens adopt to the new possibilities provided by the technological developments; and increased their participation to the government; they also found ways for getting in touch with the upper ranks of the government and to question their actions. Within this framework some suggestions to the related agencies had been provided. Keywords: Corporate communication, participatory democracy, social media, democratization, democratic right, public relations.