Evaluation of the Potential for Districts/Counties to Become Provinces with Respect to the Level of Urbanization in Turkey

This paper presents the political, socio-economic, spatial and demographic aspects for the changing administrative status of districts/counties in Turkey in the last two decades (1990s and 2000s) with respect to urbanization and development levels. There has been a rapid increase in the number of provinces in Turkey recently. Fourteen districts/counties have been announced as new provinces in years between 1989 and 1999. There were attempts and applications for the other 129 districts, till the present day to become a "province". In fact, attempts and requests to become a province for districts create pressures on policy makers, central government bureaucrats and members of the Parliament and prevent adequate formulation of urbanization and administrative subdivision. In this study, it is aimed to take a picture of the urbanization levels of districts by using the multivariate statistical analysis and to develop some proposals for the applications of changing the administrative status of settlements as well.