Impact of Recent Changes on Local Government Discretion and Accountability in Turkey

Abstract

The first generation local government reforms in Turkey partially granted discretion to local governments. However, they have largely failed to improve downward accountability towards citizens. In 2012, the government has embarked on the second generation reforms which aimed to achieve economies of scale in municipal service provision through municipal amalgamation. The government redesigned the configuration of municipalities, abolished special provincial administrations in metropolitan municipal jurisdictions and converted villages to neighborhoods of municipalities. This paper extends the earlier analysis on local government discretion and accountability to these recent changes. The main focus of the paper is on fiscal discretion and accountability since these changes have mostly affected the fiscal structure of local governments. Analyzing the data issued by the Ministry of Finance, the preliminary results show that local governments have become more dependent on intergovernmental transfers.

Local Governance Lessons from Turkey’s System: Enhancing Local Governance in Afghanistan

“…As the population has been grown rapidly in urban areas, numerous reformations have been applied to foster the effectiveness of the municipalities. Furthermore, other main reasons behind these reformations were decentralization of power, the scale of the economy, and the European Union integration process ; see also Yılmaz & Güner, 2017). Municipalities in Turkey are classified into two categories: Provincial Municipalities and Metropolitan Municipalities.…”

“…The European Charter of local Self-Governments on its Article 5 indicates that "Changes in Local authority boundaries shall not be made without prior consultation of the local communities concerned, possibly by means of a referendum where this permitted by statute". Formulating weak municipal councils compared to mayors, decentralization in metropolitan municipalities, lack of devolution of power for residents and lack of access to local administrations at the local level are main concerns that may result in declining of citizen participation and undermining of local democracy in Turkey, especially in Turkey's most populated cities (Akilli & Akilli, 2014; see also Yılmaz & Güner, 2017).…”

The Unbearable Failure of Decentralisation in Turkey

“…The new model also involved a transfer of responsibility to the largest local authority -that is, to the metropolitan municipality -hence a recentralisation was taking place at the metropolitan level. The 2012 reform, which adopted a topdown, heavy-handed approach that abolished almost half of the country's municipalities without any referendum or consultation with citizens, was deemed a violation of the constitution and the European Charter of Local Self-Government and therefore a threat to local democracy by many authors (Gözler, 2013;Elicin, 2018;Yılmaz & Güner, 2017).…”

“…• lbank was changed to a joint stock company in February 2011, the bank has ceased delivering comprehensive information about deductions at the source except for the total amount of transfers to SPAs and municipalities. Yılmaz and Güner (2017) state that the bank hides behind the banking law in rejecting requests for information (p. 245).…”