Interregional development disparities and convergence in the EU and Turkey in the framework of new regionalism

The main aim of new regionalism is to create a competitive and self ? confident region that can integrate with other regions and countries by mobilizing the local potential. New regionalism in EU is being organized ideally by localizing of socio-economic resolution process and putting a common policy into practice for sub-national theoretical frame. Along with this phenomenon, the EU regional policies have passed through a turning point searching more efficient strategies in an atmosphere of economic uncertainty and political change. Interregional convergence and regional development agencies have come into prominence in this process.The regional development agencies have become an approach which is imposed on all member states in the EU. The aims of the regional development agencies are to revitalize the economy in the region, to foster the participation of local community in the development process and to make them benefit from this development through policies which have been developed by taking into account the potentials and problems of the region. They achieve increasing autonomy in their region regarding the economic development and encourage their region to participate in the interregional development competition by attracting investors from abroad to their region. Putting forward the regional inequality and defining whether there is convergence or divergence is essential for this process and the regional development agencies as the European Union has attached importance to convergence phenomenon, acquired a new regionalism understanding and charged regional development agencies with the task of mitigating the interregional differences in terms of development as of 1990s.It is seen that there are significant interregional differences in terms of development in Turkey depending on the physical, economic and social conditions. The policies pursuing the goal of overcoming this problem have been implemented since 1960s. As a result of the European Council held in Helsinki in 1999, the candidacy process of Turkey to the EU was initiated. Turkey has been trying to harmonise with the regional policy area of the EU through some institutional and legal regulations since 2001. In the evaluation of the EU, Turkey has been defined as a country experiencing the most severe regional problems among the candidate countries and the member states. It is necessary that the new phenomenon of regionalism should be adopted in Turkey and the regional development agencies should find an area of application as in the EU member states.