Effects of Law No. 6360 on Fiscal Decentralization: The Case of Antalya Province

The extent to which local governments will be autonomous, what their sources of income will be, and how their powers and responsibilities will be determined have long been discussed both theoretically and in practice. Although local government models do not exactly fit the management and financial structure of every country, organizations such as the World Bank, private organizations and academic studies recommend local government reform in many countries in the field of decentralization and financial decentralization in particular. In recent years, a significant change in the field of local governments in our country has been made with Law No. 6360, which became law in 2012. With this law, the number of metropolitan municipalities was increased to 30, the service limit was determined as the entire provincial limit, and the special provincial administrations in these provinces were abolished. On the other hand, special provincial administrations continued their existence in 51 provinces. In this study, the changes that occurred in Antalya Metropolitan Municipality between 2012 and 2022, in terms of financial decentralization elements, especially resource allocation, task and authority sharing, within the scope of Law No. 6360, were revealed. Our findings show that the law in question does not provide a significant financial and administrative advantage for the province of Antalya.