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Local Governance Capacities in Turkey

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Decentralization and Governance Capacity

Part of the book series: Public Sector Organizations ((PSO))

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Abstract

This chapter explores the local government capacities in Turkey in the aftermath of decentralization reforms. Relying on the international and national reports, as well as surveys conducted with majors and deputy majors of provincial municipalities, the chapter analyzes financial, material, managerial, planning, communication, and human resources capabilities in local government.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Data source is Ministry of Finance www.muhasebat.gov.tr.

  2. 2.

    The budget item is ‘kişi ve gelirlerden alınan paylar’.

  3. 3.

    The sum of budget items ‘kişi ve gelirlerden alınan paylar’ and ‘merkezi yönetim bütçesine dahil idarelerden alınan bağış ve yardımlar’.

  4. 4.

    According to 2016 data, the share of own-source revenues is as follows: municipal taxation (15.1%), enterprise and property revenues (10.4%), and capital revenues (7.2%).

  5. 5.

    Municipal taxes are property taxes (land, building) advertising tax, entertainment tax, communications tax, fire insurance tax, electricity and liquid petroleum gas consumption tax, and environment cleaning tax.

  6. 6.

    Occupation fees, fee for working permissions on holidays, freshwater sources fee, commissioners fee, building user fee, land development fee, business opening permit fee, examination license and report fee, and health document fee.

  7. 7.

    In municipalities, land tax for building plots is one per thousand, and for other plots of lands three per thousand. The building tax is for dwellings one per thousand and for other buildings two per thousand.

  8. 8.

    Construction fee (25%), occupation fee (18%), wholesale market fee (12%), and building user permit fee (9%) are directly affected by market conditions.

  9. 9.

    See the Appendices.

  10. 10.

    Data is retrieved from State Planning Office repositories.

  11. 11.

    The e-transformation of Turkey was initiated in February 2003. The State Planning Organisation (SPO) was assigned to coordinate the project. A new institutional structure was formed by introducing e-Transformation Turkey Executive Board, e-Transformation Leaders, and an Advisory Board (Telli 2011).

  12. 12.

    The following information is taken from a news piece in Today’s Zaman (July 2, 2012): ‘Undertaken by the Ministry of Education and supported by the Ministry of Transport and Communications, the Movement to Increase Opportunities and Technology (FATIH) Project is expected, once finalised, to be in use in 570,000 classrooms in 42,000 schools all around Turkey. According to government plans, teachers will be able to instantly access any document around the world they may need for their class, projecting it on the interactive smart board. The project will also facilitate long-distance learning programs while encouraging a gradual transition to e-textbooks and other electronic-learning materials for each class. In the second component of the project, there will be 110 in-service training centers connected to each other through a network that covers Turkey’s 81 provinces for educator training purposes, where all the participants will able to interact with each other live through teleconferencing. The last component is the establishment of a secure and appropriate network infrastructure for all the schools across the country’. FATIH project was inaugurated in 2010, and initially, the project was expected to cost 4.9 billion TL in ICT investments in the education sector. However, the project’s success has been seriously undermined after overly exceeding the initial costs (about 1 billion TL is earmarked for the project every year), and limited achievements with initial targets. In 2017, the Ministry of Education has announced according to the project targets ‘66% of the digital infrastructure at schools, 71% of interactive smart-boards, and 19% of tablet distribution’ is completed.

  13. 13.

    The information is taken from the European Commission report ‘E-government in Turkey May 2018’.

  14. 14.

    The performance scores for ‘Education Level’ and ‘Internet Users’ for the EU (31) average are, respectively, 0.29 and 0.79, whereas it is 0.15 and 0.51 for Turkey.

  15. 15.

    The study is conducted in years 2008 and 2009 and comprises data from 86% of all tenders.

  16. 16.

    Ibid.

  17. 17.

    Local Administration Reform in Turkey (LAR) is an IPA project funded by the EU accession grants, to support the implementation of local government reforms by the Ministry of Interior. The first phase (LAR I) took place in 2005–2007 and the second phase (LAR II) took place in 2009–2011.

  18. 18.

    The data is retrieved from Eurostat Web site on May 29, 2018. The EU average of each measure is, respectively, 87 and 81%.

  19. 19.

    For Turkey, the percentages are, respectively, 42, 38, 22, and 30%. The EU average is for the same, 49, 41, 30, and 30.

  20. 20.

    According to EC’s e-Government Benchmark 2016 report, Turkey is falling under the category of ‘fair’ at ‘Transparent Government’ with an overall score of 56. The measure indicates to what extent the government is transparent regarding (i) their own responsibilities and performance, (ii) the process of service delivery, and (iii) personal data involved.

  21. 21.

    General Directorate of Local Administrations (2011). E-devlet (yerel) uygulamaları anketi raporlaması. Ministry of Interior.

  22. 22.

    The Internet usage for the age group 16–24 is 87.5%, which is significantly more than the country average of 66.8% (Turkish Statistical Institute 2017). Also among OECD countries, the difference in Internet usage between 16–24 and 55–74 age groups is highest in Turkey (OECD 2017: 170).

  23. 23.

    Two socio-economically most lagging behind NUTS regions in Turkey; Southeastern Anatolia, and East Black Sea Regions perform the lowest scores on the percentage of households with a broadband connection (69 and 67%), while Istanbul region scores 89%.

  24. 24.

    This desk is usually referred to as ‘white desk’.

  25. 25.

    ‘YerelBilgi’ literally means local information.

  26. 26.

    Public Administration Institute for Turkey and the Middle East (TODAIE) is a public body inaugurated in 1952 to conduct research on public administration and to provide training to civil servants. YerelBilgi Project is taken over by the Ministry of Interior in 2004.

  27. 27.

    The most prominent one is the Union of Marmara Municipalities.

  28. 28.

    The State Planning Organisation was restructured as the Ministry of Development in 2011.

  29. 29.

    The bylaw ‘Mahalli Idareler Bütçe ve Muhasebe Yönetmeliği’ is issued in May 2016.

  30. 30.

    It is about 17% of all mayors.

  31. 31.

    In 2011, an average monthly middle income was between 2000 and 4000 TLs.

  32. 32.

    In 2017, Union of Turkish Municipalities provided 676 pieces of training with 46,234 participants from municipalities (i.e., mayors, councilors, municipal personnel) (TBB 2017: 75).

  33. 33.

    Data are retrieved from Public Personnel Directorate’s repositories (Devlet Personel Başkanlığı).

  34. 34.

    The 657-coded Civil Service Law is enacted in 1965 and has been subjected to minor amendments since then.

  35. 35.

    Most recently, a new draft bill for civil service regime is expected after June 2018 general elections.

  36. 36.

    The new census system is designed on the basis of residence addresses of the citizens instead of a one-day enumeration on a ‘de facto’ basis. The main purpose of the system is to prevent the population overcount which was usually the case in the former system.

  37. 37.

    See Art. 166 of the Law.

  38. 38.

    See the Appendices.

  39. 39.

    Article 49 of the Law on Municipalities states personnel expenses cannot exceed 30% of municipal revenues. For the municipalities with less than 10,000 residents, the regulation is that personnel expenses cannot exceed 40% of municipal revenues. Moreover, the same article states that the performance payments are only applicable to permanent civil servants, they cannot be allocated more than twice a year and limited with the 10% of municipal personnel.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Leuven, Leuven, Belgium

    Evrim Tan

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Tan, E. (2019). Local Governance Capacities in Turkey. In: Decentralization and Governance Capacity . Public Sector Organizations. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-02047-7_4

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