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THE OMBUDSMAN INSTITUTION OF THE REPUBLIC OF TÜRKİYE 2018 ANNUAL REPORT

Communication Meetings with Media and Press Representatives

In Ankara and Istanbul, our Institution came together with all local media representatives,
chief editors and columnists a few times.

In addition, on 20 February 2018, a meeting was held with the foreign press and media
representatives including Russian Sputnik News Agency, Kurdish Rudaw TV, Reuters,
Bloomberg, America’s Voice, Cyprus BRT TV, Chinese International Radio TV, Palestinian
News Agency, Iranian News Agency and Deutsche Welle which are based in Ankara.

Website of the Ombudsman Institution
The website of the Institution was visited over 963.035 times in 2018.

2.4 Awareness Raising Activities

The Institution places a great deal of importance to raising awareness about its activities. In
order to achieve the goal of increasing the recognition of the Institution by the public, the
Institution focused on institutional communication activities to reach large segments of the
society, and organized numerous conferences, workshops, provincial visits etc. participated by
the students from primary schools, high schools, universities as well as by village headmen and
representatives of civil society organizations.

In this regard, with a desire to reach students in terms of raising awareness and promoting the
right to seek legal remedies, equity and justice, our Institution supports university students to
create Ombudsman Student Associations/Clubs. Currently, there are Ombudsman Student
Clubs within more than 60 universities and many more are intended to be established in the
upcoming days.

In addition, as part of a Project on «Spreading the culture of legal remedies», the Institution
has organized working visits to some European countries such as Germany, Belgium, Austria,
France, Sweden etc., where the Turkish population is the highest. There are more than 6 million
Turkish citizens in European countries and 3 million of them live in Germany. Especially in
recent years, racism, discrimination, Islamophobia and xenophobia have increased resulting
in many violent acts suffered by our Turkish citizens abroad. In this regard, at the first stage
of the Project, the Institution comes together with the representatives of the Civil Society
Organizations created by Turkish citizens living in the above-mentioned European countries,
and with the prominent persons at the Turkish Consulate General in that country. The
Institution listens to their problems and informs them about the Ombudsman Institutions,
Human Rights Institutions and Anti-Discrimination Institutions functioning in the country
where they live, and provides guidance about how to apply to the Ombudsman and seek their
legal remedies in the country where they live.

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