Esen Ermiş Ertürk Uluslararası İlişkiler Dijital Diplomasi

Cyber diplomacy can be defined as an attempt to facilitate communication, negotiate agreements, gather information from intelligence and other countries to prevent cyber conflicts, taking into account its foreign policy agenda.

The primary role of diplomacy is to ensure that we meet in common through dialogue, so the primary role of cyber diplomacy will be to find solutions to problems through digital dialogue.  

Social networks like Twitter support the growth of cyber diplomacy. More than 70% of the world's heads of state are on Twitter. The public can now better see diplomatic interactions by reading the retweets, answers and words of popular diplomats on Twitter

Digital diplomacy is an expanded form of public diplomacy.  Twitter defines the use of social media platforms such as Facebook. Thanks to these digital platforms, states communicate with the world public and express themselves in cost-free manners.  Traditional and digital diplomacy are intertwined, but let me tell you a fact that digital diplomacy cannot replace traditional diplomacy. But in the age of information technology, no country can afford to fall behind on these digital diplomatic platforms. COVID-19 has added another dimension to digital diplomacy.

The role of digital diplomacy before the COVID-19 Outbreak is not as understood as it is now. But now digital diplomacy plays an important role in many ways. These days, social media platform like Twitter is very useful for communication and information publishing. To give an example of the important role of digital diplomacy on social media, especially played by Twitter, many countries began closing their borders when the epidemic began, and thousands of different citizens from different countries were stranded in different countries. Embassies/consulates that communicate with citizens using Digital Channels shared vital information about return flights through these digital channels and procedures for sending them back to their country. For example, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Turkey used Twitter very effectively and reached out to many of our citizens in the same way reached our embassies and ministers.

TWEET TO DISPROVE CONSPIRACY THEORISTS

Conspiracy theories, spreading lies to the world's public with digital channels , adding to the lack of official information, have caused problems between countries. Some social media platforms set up their own information centers to prevent misinformation. Direct heads of state or heads of government, the digital diplomacy of official government communications on channels such as Twitter has begun to control the damage caused by misinformation.

Diplomats have effectively used digital resources to monitor and disclose fake social media accounts.

People are actively chatting via Google Meet, Skype, and Zoom and joining their followers via Periscope. Despite face-to-face meetings between masked foreign ministers, there is little chance of bilateral or crowded talks going back to normal.

When you look at extensive analysis of https://twiplomacy.com/blog/category/studies/

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan (Covid-19) is among the most effective leaders in the Pandemic.

Considering our geopolitics, we see that Turkey is actively using its effective use to announce flights that will bring its citizens stranded in other countries to Turkey in order to announce the economic measures it has taken for its citizens. Another issue is misinformation (disinformation) social media, a medium where many false information is spread too fast to terrorize the public. To prevent this, www.ifcncodeofprinciples.poynter.org has also https://teyit.org/nedir/gibi sites have been established in Turkey. Although these are individual and non-state media, I think that when the legal infrastructure is established in the future, states will try to protect their citizens from misinformation through sites like this.

Virtual Public Diplomacy and New Diplomats

As an international relations graduate, I think new lessons and programs should be included in the process in order for individuals who are more informed about technology and who are familiar with the language of social media in their education of the next generation of diplomats who will grow up in the coming period. The diplomat of the Turkish people who like to chat, who has come a serious way in tracking the world, using social media, should be as active as President Erdogan, as I just mentioned above. (The number of internet users in Turkey reached 62.7 million people, which is 75.3% of the population. When you look at internet use by gender, 81.8 percent of men in Turkey are; 68.9 percent of women internet users )