Covid- 19 Pandemisi ve Türkiye’nin Kamu Diplomasisi Uygulamaları/Türkiye’s Public Diplomacy Practices During the Covid-19 Pandemic

Covid-19, which emerged in China at the end of 2019, quickly affected the whole world and turned into a global pandemic in a short time. The pandemic has revealed the fragility of our world and the limitations of multilateral diplomacy in finding solutions to global problems. Health-related international organizations and developed countries have often failed to provide the expected contribution to crisis management, and many countries have battled the pandemic with their means. In this process, Türkiye has been one of the countries trying to contribute to the repair of the global damage caused by the pandemic.This global health crisis has revealed the inadequacy of traditional diplomatic methods and the necessity of successful public diplomacy. There are different success criteria in the public diplomacy literature. This study discusses Türkiye's public diplomacy during the pandemic based on three criteria that are frequently emphasized in the literature: ‘discourse-capacity consistency, discourse-action consistency and international visibility'. The main question is: Does Türkiye's public diplomacy in this process have discourse-capacity and discourse-action consistency, and has Türkiye carried out public diplomacy activities that can bring international visibility to these contributions? These criteria were evaluated from the perspectives of three prominent institutions of Türkiye that shone out during the pandemic: Directorate of Communications, Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Ministry of Health. The discourses, capacities and activities of these institutions during the pandemic were examined comparatively, and their attempts to inform the international public about Türkiye's contributions to the crisis response were evaluated. In the study, it was concluded that Türkiye established discourses that were consistent with its capacity in fighting the pandemic, acted with discourse-action consistency in this process, and through public diplomacy, Türkiye raised international awareness of its contributions to global crisis governance.