This study deals with the communication and public relations understanding of the public administration in Turkey and aims to determine this understanding. Within the framework of the establishment of the State Planning Organization and the first five-year development plan prepared when the studies on population planning (family planning), which is accepted as the first public relations project, are taken into account, it is revealed that public relations are realized by the initiative of the public administration in Turkey before the private sector. The main framework of this study is to reveal the communication and public relations understanding of the public administration, based on the texts of the five-year development plans covering the period 2001-2019, by making use of the document analysis and the historical-sociological perspective of this experience. With the influence of modernization theory,both media as a corporate and public relations at the point of communication planning has been seen as a management device in Turkey within the framework of development goals. This historical experience, which also affects the understanding and practices of public relations and knowledge at the academic level, has revealed that the phenomenon of communication is seen mostly at the organizational and mass communication level and a linear communication management practice. With the opportunities provided by information and communication technologies and the contribution of digitalization and the European Union membership process, since the beginning of the twentieth century, there has been an asymmetrical communication understanding and practice. Although there have been efforts of transition from the linear-communication understanding and public relations practice to the two-way symmetrical model.