Ascendancy of the Emerging Constellations in Intractable Turkish Regionalization

Abstract

Turkey, a Unitarian and developing country, has been in accession process to the EU since the opening negotiation date of 3rd October 2005. The process and national circumstances require a regional policy dealing with both interregional disparities and convergence to EU averages as well as globalized competition. However, with preconditions of such regional policy respect, Turkey has a plethora of flaws: economy and social policies have not been designed and implement properly, interregional disparities is immensely large, coherent economic and geographic regions are absent, there have been an institution void and pretty patchiness in traditional implementations.

A new era beginning with the EU integration introduced a set of new terminologies and methodologies in the field of regional policy. To this end, Turkey has been in a route of adopting the components in terms of preparing operational programme in partnership, designating new NUTS divisions, structuring new institutions or reconfiguration of existing governance units, building capacity in central and regional levels. Due to lack of sufficient experience and consensus, the process seems to take longer time than assumed.

As responses to nuisances being at central level, new initiatives have been sprouting at various localities of Turkey. These appear to have potential to generate self-growing areas having international links on high-technology ground or endogenous development in backward areas. A rigorous paradigm is needed to incorporate such assets into national regional policy agenda.

Keywords: Turkey, regional policy, regionalism, public efficiency, regional development agencies

JEL Classification: R11, R58