Cooperatives as a local development model: Case of Hatay Metropolitan Municipality

Cooperatives are solidarity models that contribute to the strengthening of the economy and are starting to be preferred again today. Cooperative structures play an important role in local economic development. As a matter of fact, the fact that the UN has been publishing reports on the role of cooperatives in economic and social development for a long time can be considered as an indicator of this situation. In our country, municipalities have a very important role in the use of cooperatives as a tool in re-development policies. Especially in the last two decades, municipalities have become more effective local actors by expanding their duties and authorities as a result of the arrangements made to reduce centralization in public administration. Thus, municipalities have started to act as dynamic local actors that can create resources in terms of local development, establish relations between actors, as well as provide basic municipal services such as roads, water and cleaning. In the last 10 years, we see that good practices regarding municipal cooperative relations have increasingly continued in our country. We can say that the successful relations established by the Izmir Metropolitan Municipality with the development cooperatives have an encouraging effect for many municipalities in establishing relations with the cooperatives. In this context, Hatay Metropolitan Municipality is trying to establish relations with cooperatives for local development, which are diligent and original, with the effect of existing good practices. In our study, we focused on how Hatay Metropolitan Municipality is in relationship with cooperatives at the point of local development. In order to contain this relationship in question, a qualitative field study consisting of semi-structured questions for both Hatay Metropolitan Municipality and agricultural development cooperatives operating in Hatay and based on descriptive and content analyzes of the findings obtained was conducted. With the contribution of the results we have obtained, a cooperative municipality model proposal, which claims that cooperatives can be quite effective in terms of local development, has been put forward and the model proposal in question has been named the "Hatay Model". SWOT and PESTLE Analyzes were made to improve our model, and comprehensive suggestions were put forward within the framework of emerging strengths and weaknesses.