Bulletin de liaison et d'information - Institut kurde de Paris

REVUE DE PRESSE-PRESS REVIEW-BERHEVOKA ÇAPÊ-RWISTA STAMPA-DENTRO DE LA PRENSA-BASIN ÖZETÎ
only government represented by FH's Washington
office.
An independent source shared with TDN the way
FH showed up before the ~urkish int~ragency com7
mission when the five finalist comparues were called
to Ankara this past March for the final pitches. Some
companies sent two representatives. Some sent four.
FH flew to Ankara with eight reps, armed with pre.
sentation packages, and slide shows. They created a
favorable frrst impression that lasted.
Buckmaster makes it clear that, despite the media.
vacuum that Turkey found itself in the past, "measuring
success by news courage in Washington is not a
healthy way to measure success." Press coverage is
only a part of an ongoing long-term educational
effort, he explains.
There won't be any quick overnight solution on the
press coverage front, he implies. When asked to name
any specific programs plànned to counteract the
media silence of the past years, Buckmaster sufficed
to say that they work closely with the Turkish
embassy and will continue to work tirelessly on the
media. On the recent Colman McCarthy article in the
Washington Post, for example, which depicted the
Ciller government as a "brutal regime" on the basis of
the testimony of Kathryn Porter, he said an immediate
resp~msewas prepared noting the many errors that the
artIcle contained.
I know that the office of the Turkish press attache
also frred off a response to the Post, as well as the
American Turkish Council. None of their responses
were published. A letter from the Greek press attache
was published though, decrying Macedonian intransigence.
That is, I could not get a clear sense of how
such media barriers would be tackled but I felt that
the approach would be to educate the American public
patIently and win the media over by persuasion. I
can 't help but pray that such a rational approach
would indeed work in this toWn where the dominant
liberal press usually don't take any Turkish prisoners.
Working closely with Buckmaster on the Turkish
account is FH Vice President Selim Bingöl, a Turkish
American PR professionalborn to a Turkish father
and American mother. Having lived both in Turkey
Gamk - 20-21 .uin 1994
TURQUIE-KURDES
and the U.S. dunng his youth has given Mr. Bingöl
the multicultural perspective necessary to address the
Turkish media needs.
FH seems flexible enough to provide a spectrum of
related services when called upon by the Turkish
Embassy. Most recently, they co-hosted a portion of
the U.S. visit of the Turkish Undersecretary of Energy
and NJtural resources. Again, during Prime Minister
Çiller's private visitto U.S. last month, FH arranged
her appearance on CNN in Boston.
"We are committed to two things," Buckmaster
emphasizes: "To provide real advocacy to the Turkish
Embassy on a daily basis. And to keep in mind the
long view, to make sure that Turkey is afforded the
resoect it deserves from much of the world community.'~
SIDEBAR
Heishman-Hillard (FH) received the highest ranking
in recent years from a respected industry source,
Inside PR , "the magazine of reputation management."
Inside PR's 1993 agency report card listed
FH's Washington office as the top agency in the
whole nation. FH's St. Louis headquarters was also
among the top five agencies.
FH was the only agency to be ranked fITStor second
worldwide in five consecutive Inside PR surveys
conducted between 1989 and 1993. For comparison,
Hill & Knowlton (HK), for example, who held
the Turkish account for a number of years, ranked
seventh in 1989 and was not even ranked by the
Inside PR magazine in the top ten since then. The
ma~azine's fax poll conducted in 1993 among 1,000
semor PR and marketing executives, plus 20 personal
interviews with clients of each agency, produced the
following result in different areas:
In terms of Strategic Thinking, FH ranked first
among the PR a~encies. (HK ranked fourth.) In
Creativity, FH slipped back to fourth but still did
much better than HK's 14th. In terms of TaIent (i.e.
reputation for quality personnel), PK was rated frrst.
(HK was not among the top sixteen.) FK's Work
Environment was again ranked fITSt( HK was ranked
sixteenth).
Vague d'attentats à Istanbul
Alors que les autorités militaires
turques annoncent avec une
assurance croissante la fin prochaine
du PKK, Istanbul connaît
depuis une semaine une vague q'attentats
à la bombe non revendiqués mais
attribués par la police au PKK. Un regain
d'activité terroriste qui ne devrait pour
autant pas inquiéter outre masure les
militaires turcs, qui n'ont eu de cesse
d'attribuer les opérations urbaines des
rebelles à une érosion de leurs forces
dans leur terrain d'action traditionnel, le
sud-est anatolien. Pour le PKK au
contraire, dont le leader avait promis l'an
dernier une série d'actions armées dans
les villes, visant essentiellement les
cibles touristiqu..e.,il s'agit d'un change.-
ment de stratégie, qui ne signifie
d'ailleurs aucunement "abandon de la
guérilla au Kurdistan turc.
Pourtant, les attentats sont dirigés
cette fois contre des lieux publics et
non des sites touristiques, ce qui, à
l'approche de l'été, n'est d'ailleurs pas
vraiment contradictoire. Alors que la saison
touristique commence, ou devrait
commencer, ces attentats risquent
d'avoir des incidences tout aussi dissuasives
sur les touristes et tout autant porter
préjudice à l'industrie touristique
turque déjà en difficultés en raison des
menaces proférées par le PKK.
Cinq attentats,. dont deux ont
pu être évités de justesse, ont été ainsi
enregistrés à Istanbul depuis une dizaine
de jours. Six personnes ont été blessées
par l'explosion d'une bombe ce
jour-là sur un bateau assurant la liaison
entre les rives asiatiques et européennes
de la ville. Mardi dernier, le chauffeur
d'un autobus, alerté par des passagers,
a pu jeter dehors un paquet suspect
avant l'explosion de la bombe qui se
trouvait de dans. Même scénario jeudi
dernier, quand les responsables d'une
compagnie de bus ont refusé de charger
sur un autocar une valise abandonnée
par deux passagers. Ils ont été bien àvisés:
l'engin qu'elle contenait a explosé
dans le dépôt de la compagnie sans .faire
de victimes. Samedi, c'est encore les
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