Regional and Sectoral Disparities in Turkey

Regional development and regional planning subjects are very closely linked with the development projects in Turkey. The main applications are usually based on the elimination of disparities among regions. Also, regionalization movement has brought a new structuring process for candidate countries to the European Union. The main applications in this process can be simply based on the smaller region groups to collect more detailed and reliable data-information. This movement, of course, has to be considered together with developmental issues to solve regional inequalities among more and less developed regions by applying better regional development projects between specific region groups.;As the beginning step of regional analyses, regional GDP per capita developments have been examined and discussed by Neoclassic Growth Model. As the findings, GDP per capita income convergence in geographic and NUTS (Nomenclature of Territorial Units for Statistics) level-1 and level-2 regions of Turkey was not clearly observed. These findings of regional divergence provide a remarkable explanation for the level of steady state per capita across regions. However, they are not capable to seek multi dimensional decision making for better steady state regions.;As the second step of regional analyses, to eliminate points, which convergence analyses can not determine, and to reach more detailed information about the sectoral conditions in the regions, some regional programs in NUTS level-2 regions have been examined by regional GDP per capita by sectors. This data, which is a more comprehensive than single income distributions, has been examined by the Gini coefficient in terms of sectoral disparities. Only in XG (government services) and XT (trade) decreasing tendencies are found.;As the third step of regional analyses, CDA (Canonical Discriminant Analysis) from different aspects (intraregional and interregional) is tested to show the effect of sectors in GDP per capita in the cause of convergence or divergence. It is observed that the intraregional divergence is increasing across underdeveloped NUTS level-2 regions. In developing NUTS level-2 regions, although some increases are observed in standard deviation in 1989, 1992, and 2000, there is a remarkable sigma-convergence tendency across developing regions after 1987. Lastly, a strong intraregional sigma-convergence is observed across developed regions from 1975 to 1995. After 1995, the sigma-convergence tendency is decreasing towards a divergence trend. Also, sectoral distances of the regions from the centre of axes (in CDA figures according to the years) and negative relations of the regions with the sectors are becoming dominant factors of divergence in developed regions. However, developing and underdeveloped regions have adverse tendencies. The reason of this is confirmed by findings of discriminant sectors in interregional convergence analyses. In a word, when the standard deviation decreases, the regions are getting centralized under the coverage area of discriminant sectors. (Abstract shortened by UMI.);Firstly, this study explains Turkey's regional components which are regionalization, administrative structure, regional planning system, regional integration, and regional interactions. It has been also aimed to set out the regional development objectives in Turkey by focusing on the effect of new regional approaches in the administrative structure, sustainable regional development in the regions, interactions between project implementation processes and regional disparities (or parities), and integration of Turkey with the EU and the world regional policies.