The Turkish Ombudsman goes public

Turkey has had the figure of the Ombudsman since 2013. Having successfully instituted it, the country now faces the challenge of publicizing its existence in the country and explaining its importance to its over 80 million citizens. The how is something they are learning with the support of a twinning project being financed by the EU, led by the Spanish Ombudsman and managed by the FIIAPP and France. Last week the Galician Ombudsman, José Julio Fernández, and the Head of Communications for the Spanish Ombudsman, Cristina Lladó, went to Turkey to give a two-day training workshop on visibility and awareness-raising for employees of the Turkish Ombudsman’s Office.

They presented communication strategies to increase the visibility of its activities, explained how to manage relations with the news media so that they write about these activities, and provided examples of visibility tools such as leaflets and awareness campaigns for Turkish society.

They also covered the use of social networks like Facebook and Twitter, and showed strategies for reaching people with limited resources, internal communication within the Turkish institution itself, annual activity reports and the day-to-day workings of the communications department of the Spanish Ombudsman.

This type of workshop is the first held within the framework of the project, whose ultimate goal is to consolidate the roots of the Turkish Ombudsman and strengthen its role as a key institution in the administrative context of the country according to the standards of the EU and the Paris Principles. It started last March with a budget of more than one and a half million euros and will be underway until 2016.