Municipalities and Sustainability Practices in the Context of Governmental Public Relations: A Study on Metropolitan Municipalities in Turkey

Governmental public relations includes public relations strategy and practices put forward by central and local governmental institutions. Public relations practices are essential for public institutions which are established with public capital and which aims to reveal the public interest through public service provision so as to achieve the goals successfully and to fulfill their institutional missions. In recent years, sustainability, which has been on the radar of the international organizations, governments, non-governmental organizations, private sector organizations and society, attracts interest as an issue needs to be managed in the context of governmental public relations. Sustainability, which private sector organizations attach importance in the context of responsibility, is also important in terms of public relations since it has got connections with a number of objectives public policy and applications. In this study, sustainability has been discussed in the context of governmental public relations. Sustainability practices of metropolitan municipalities in Turkey have been examined by conducting content analysis on corporate web sites. The content analysis has been implemented on the basis of sustainability development goals set by the United Nations Development Program. The findings obtained from the research have indicated that municipalities carry out activities for sustainability purposes. It has been detected that the sustainability practices mostly focus on ending hunger, ending poverty, improving health, qualified living, and quality education.