Media organs important actors for public diplomacy: Turkish FM

Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said Tuesday media organs are important actors for public diplomacy.

Davutoglu made the remarks at the opening speech of the two-day "Turkish-Speaking Countries Media Forum," jointly organized by Turkey's Directorate General of Press and Information and Turkish Foreign Ministry's Center for Strategic Research, in the Turkish capital of Ankara.

Davutoglu said, "Today, diplomacy is no longer a series of negotiations carried out by diplomats behind closed doors or in wide conference rooms. New diplomacy fields are rising nowadays."

He said no matter what kind of decisions political leaders take and how successfully diplomats implement such decisions, those decisions could not gain respectability in public unless a healthy public diplomacy is launched.

He added that media organs were responsible for creating the perception of a positive and friendly atmosphere between countries.

The minister also noted that press should be institutionalized and freedom of press should become widespread in the Turkic world.

Topics of the forum include such issues as media's effect on democratization in the globalization process, media and NGOs' role in improving economic, social and cultural cooperation in the Turkic world and media's role in public diplomacy.

Representatives from Turkey, Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan are attending the forum.

Source: Xinhua