The process that emerged when the Russian Federation began to invade Ukraine on February 24, 2022 continues to shake the world. It seems that this bloody war has not yet come to an end, and it is known that Turkey, as the only country that can talk directly to both warring parties, is making serious efforts to end the conflict. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan strives to establish peace in almost constant contact with his Russian and Ukrainian counterparts.

Among these efforts, the issue that has come to the fore recently and that the whole world has been talking about is the free distribution of grain that cannot be exported from Ukraine due to the war. Turkish diplomacy, with great effort, provided the opportunity to export grain by mediating between Russia and Ukraine. Along with the grain, the cargo of cargo ships passing through the "grain corridor" to the countries in need has become Turkey's reputation.

Mediating between conflicting parties is not part of every country's diplomacy. It is essential that the conflicting parties trust this mediator. However, gaining this trust is not easy. Soft power forms the basis of trust. Because Turkish diplomacy has this confidence, it has reached the capacity to mediate between Russia and Ukraine in the grain issue and prisoner exchange.

There are many countries in the world that need Ukrainian grain. Most of these are poor countries. Turkey has also made efforts to ensure that the ships full of grain passing through the Turkish straits from Ukraine reach these countries. These initiatives of Turkey made it possible for the food crisis that emerged with the withdrawal of Ukrainian grain from the world market and the rapidly rising wheat prices to cease to be a factor of global instability with the establishment of pre-war conditions. As a result, circles that condemned Turkey on every occasion and, moreover, openly made hostility towards Turkey the cornerstone of their discourse, especially the western press, were forced to "appreciate Turkey", albeit reluctantly. However, it is also a fact that Turkey's reputation among countries that are in food crisis and need Ukrainian wheat is even higher than in western countries.

Kathy R. Fitzpatrick published "Defining Strategic Publics in a Networked World: Public Diplomacy's Challenge at Home and Abroad" in the 7th issue of The Hague Journal of Diplomacy in 2012 ( In the introduction of his article titled (pp. 421-441), he argues, with reference to Shaun Riordan, a former diplomat, that classical diplomacy will increasingly have to take civil society into account in the 21st Century. This is undoubtedly a correct determination. Ministries of Foreign Affairs and other relevant state institutions have initiated new structures for this purpose in every country and have begun to develop strategies for the societies they have determined as targets.

However, detection should be understood more as a technical requirement in line with the spirit of the time. Public diplomacy activities are affected by difficult-to-solve problems, starting from how to define the publics considered as targets and the means by which to approach them. First of all, it is essential that the principles of strategic public diplomacy be adopted from the very beginning.

The expression "from the beginning" refers to the process that begins with the definition of national interest. After making this definition, every state has to think about how to express its national interest to the outside world. The outside world may interpret your definition of national interest in its own way. But the purpose is to concretize and express that definition as made by you. The next stage in the process is to determine the target, get to know it in every aspect, and decide on which methods to work with. Afterwards, competent people and institutions must step in to implement it. Implementing all these stages one after another within the scope of an interdisciplinary strategy is a must for strategic public diplomacy.

Our age is the age of migrations. According to United Nations data, 281 million people live in a cross-border geography different from where they were born. This number corresponds to 3.6% of the world's population. Immigrants migrate from their homeland for different reasons. The majority of people who leave their countries for reasons such as political, economic, cultural and ecological reasons as well as the desire to reach better living conditions, aim to settle permanently in their new homeland. Although most immigrants initially maintain a desire to return to their country one day, ongoing conditions often inhibit their desire to return.

Countries that are the source or target of international immigrants are subject to the observation of the world public opinion due to their legislation and especially their practices on the subject. In other words, countries whose behavior towards immigrants does not comply with international ethical and legal rules are naturally criticized and their image is damaged. The image of immigrants that the homeland they left behind cannot adequately "take care of them and provide them with a safe living environment" is a damaging element for the reputation of their country of origin. The care and protection denied to immigrants by the countries they go to is harmful to their reputation.

In light of these views, migration and issues related to immigrants are becoming an area of public diplomacy as they concern the images of countries. For example, these attitudes of non-EU countries, which have been pushing back irregular immigrants in the Mediterranean and the Aegean Sea in recent years and preventing them from entering their countries, clearly constitute a violation of human rights and international law. There is a significant deterioration in the images of these countries.

From the perspective of public diplomacy, it is inevitable today that policies and practices regarding migration and immigrants are included in the strategic public diplomacy of states. Of course, for this reason, it is essential that approaches to migration and immigrants comply with human rights and the rules of international law. A mentality that leaves poor and helpless irregular migrants to die in the Aegean and the Mediterranean and sees them ill-treated in every way is absolutely out of date, immoral and unlawful. Owners of this treatment cannot be expected to have a good image.

"I am in a public park. Not far away I see a lawn and chairs along the lawn. A person walks past the chairs. I see this person, grasping him as an object and a person at the same time. What does this mean? This object is a What do I mean when I say you're human?"

(J.P.Sartre, Das Sein und das Nichts. Hamburg, 2000, p. 459)

Phenomenology or phenomenology (Ottoman: zahiriye) is an important philosophical movement of the 20th century, founded by Edmund Husserl. It is known that Jean-Paul Sartre, Martin Heidegger and Michel Foucault were also influenced by this movement. Husserl seeks the basis of all everyday, scientific and philosophical knowledge in the consistent renunciation of all preconceived notions. It attempts to describe the structures of experience without resorting to theories, derivations, or presuppositions of other disciplines, such as the natural sciences. Husserl's starting point is the ideal of a radically unprejudiced cognition, completely detached from mere mystery. This cognition must be achieved methodically in order to be scientifically understandable and objective. The claim to objectivity must always result in a distance from the relevant experiential situation, which expresses itself as a lack of closeness to the subject. But without the possibility of experiencing something "alive" or "incarnate", it is unknown to me. Thus, “by everything that I may encounter in my experience, my living, or my thoughts, I refer to those situations in which what is experienced, lived, thought originally—Husserl says 'originally'—appears at the periphery of my experience, my life, my thought, or can appear in it in an original way.

The main concern of phenomenology is the clarification of things through description of themselves. However, what 'the things themselves' are actually only emerges in the processes of self-disclosure of the subjective living being. This subjectivity arises from consciousness and becomes the object of research and study of phenomenology. The phenomenon is not an isolated object, but stands in a referential context. This makes prior knowledge, or the elicitation of prior knowledge and its separation from actual fact, an important component of phenomenological analysis. Thus the objects themselves are less than what science teaches and more than what sensory impressions convey, and function only as triggers or accompaniments of a complex meaning. To penetrate pure phenomena, a special method of access is needed: this is called the "phenomenological method of reduction".

In the light of these views, the question of how reality should be depicted in terms of communication and interaction between subjects comes to mind. What is the contribution of phenomenological reduction to image formation? How should Husserl's phenomenology explain what is represented and how in public diplomacy activities? What is the role of imitation (mimesis) in this?

Public diplomacy, which is increasingly talked about in the foreign policies of states and international relations discussions in general, is a new field with the claim of being an applied and academic discipline. Especially during the Cold War years, all the activities carried out by the hostile great powers and the blocs under their management to increase their influence on each other's societies and opinion leaders began to be mentioned in this category. In fact, activities carried out for this purpose are undoubtedly as old as human history. However, in the second half of the Twentieth Century, the phrase "public diplomacy" attracted academic attention and was interpreted as the formation of a new discipline. Although there is no consensus yet on whether it is a new academic discipline, public diplomacy activities have occupied a place that cannot be easily abandoned in the foreign policy planning of states today.

However, public diplomacy is still in its infancy. Harvard University Lecturer Eytan Gilboa* (Gilboa, 2008: 56), who wrote an important article in the field of theoretical pursuit, stated that current research in the field of public diplomacy is still weak in several respects and that most of the studies are historical in nature. Historical accounts of public diplomacy are valuable if they are analytical and not merely anecdotal; However, their contributions to the development of the theory and methodology of public diplomacy have been very limited. In addition, there were those who used public diplomacy synonymously with public relations, psychological operations and even propaganda, thus creating a confusion of concepts and therefore theories. Thus, the uniqueness of public diplomacy compared to other "international communication" fields could not be understood and explained.

KADAM will look at public diplomacy from Turkey's perspective, and will not only try to contribute to theoretical discussions through this reading. The Turkish academy's contribution to these discussions initiated by KADAM will also contribute to the development of our public diplomacy.

*Eytan Gilboa (2008), “Searching for a Theory of Public Diplomacy”. The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 2008; 616; 55-77