Press information meetings which were initiated recently as public relations activities by the Turkish Armed Forces and reflections on the published media

This study evaluates the ?Press Information Meetings? which were initiated recently as public relations activities by the Turkish Armed Forces and reflections on the published media by sampling two meetings held by the Chief of Turkish General Staff which are ?Annual Assessment Meeting? and ?Communication Meeting? dated April 14th and 29th, 2009.First section of the study, which comprises of two sections, provides theoretical information on the public relations concept of the Turkish Armed Forces. Additionally, in this section, public relations? methods and techniques with accreditation applications used by the Turkish Armed Forces are explained. In the second section, it was first the ?Annual Assessment Meeting? held on April 14th 2009 and secondly the ?Communication Meeting? held on April 14th 2009 by the Chief of Turkish General Staff to be dealt with, then we examined the reflections of these events on the published media. At the end of this section we provided a general assessment of these meetings both.This study intends to demonstrate the importance of informative meetings which were identified as a ?public relations and communications? activity in the course of earning public support by meeting the demands and expectations of people, provision of timely and factual information about the Turkish Armed Forces, prevention of information pollution in the media and instruction of the public first hand.For this purpose, it was intended to put forward informative meetings held by the Chief of Turkish General Staff Gen. İlker Başbuğ and all positive and negative comments which took place in the published media dealing with these meetings. It is possible to consider these meetings as a public relations and communication success which were arranged by the Chief of Turkish General Staff being the top authority to inform the public, to rejuvenate the image of the Turkish Armed Forces and to prevent misunderstandings. It was realized that the important point was to inform the public with facts, to feed with real information and to impede erroneous information. Because an erroneous impression established in the public might end up with influences which are impossible to restore in any case.It is considered that it would be appropriate for the Armed Forces to continue with this transformation in the communication area full steam, regarding these press meetings by the Turkish Armed Forces which is in an attempt to comply with the ever changing circumstances of the world and Turkey.Key Words1. Communication2. Openness3. Liability4. Self-confidence5. Presentation