Since the mid-2000s, Turkey has incorporated a soft power discourse into its foreign policy agenda and shifted its attention toward building up its soft power infrastructure. Up until 2013, Turkey was applauded as a regional powerhouse, an important player in the soft power arena, and a beacon of democracy and stability within an unstable region. However, the restrictions on free speech, media censorship, and the crackdown on the opposition have impacted Turkey’s current soft power ranking. While expanding its diplomatic network and public diplomacy apparatus to wield soft power, Turkey’s global reputation has seen a downward spiral. This article investigates the role that political leadership and political values play in determining Turkey’s soft power capacity. This article’s main contention is that while Turkey increases its global engagement and capacity to appeal non-Western audiences, its capacity to attract international audiences particularly in the West has diminished due to its democratic backsliding.
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to bring a communication management perspective to how nations might use their involvement in humanitarian responses to refugee crisis in attempts to improve their global standing through a case study of Turkish efforts during the Syrian Civil War.
Design/methodology/approach
In order to assess the context of Turkey’s attempts to communicate its humanitarian response to the Syrian refugee crisis and its political discourse, the authors use a two-level analysis. The authors utilize a framing analysis and the informational framework of public diplomacy. The authors conduct a framing analysis of 14 speeches delivered by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavusoglu at various international platforms in order to determine the frames and the information frame strategies employed. The authors investigate how Turkey managed its communication efforts and the ways in which the frames are used to reflect Turkey’s nation brand.
Findings
The analysis indicates that Turkey uses three frames: benevolent country, righteous side, and global power. These frames indicate that Turkey sees the refugee crisis as a problem resulting from the inefficiency of the international community and presents the “Turkish model” as the benevolent and righteous example to overcome these inefficiencies. Based on the information framework strategies used, it can be argued that the positive impact of these frames on the Turkish brand will be limited to certain audiences mainly due to the communication priorities of the country.
Originality/value
This study provides a novel communication management outlook on humanitarian aid and public diplomacy through an analysis of Turkey as an illustrative case exemplifying communication of development. This study also demonstrates a framework to assess the communication management strategies of other nations that are encountering global refugee crisis and similar humanitarian relief efforts.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.