The effect of integration prosess in metropolitan municipalities according to 6360 Law Number example of Malatya

Many reformative changes in Turkish administrative system have led to vital consequences for local and central administrations. A good deal of legislative regulations made for local administrations, which are meant to be recovered from the effect of central administration, have in line the effect of globalisation, and the number of local administrations has started to be reduced, as in EU countries in particular. The law no. 6360 is a legal text aspiring to make the most radical change and transformation ever in local administrations. This study, which deals with the changes brought about by this law in a political, administrative and economic way, discusses former practices of the law in the light of the data obtained from the field. This study also examines the relationships between the principles in the law's main preamble and text and its practices. In this study, some assessments are made over local administrations and metropolis administrations affected by local administration policies which are dominant especially in EU countries and USA and which are enlarging their sphere of influence. Of course, this study, which tries to determine the effects of the process of integration of metropolitan municipalities on local administrations, cannot be generalised to all of the metropolitan municipalities in Turkey. However, it is quite possible that cities with properties which are similar in political culture, administrative culture and rural characteristics have common problem areas. When viewed from this aspect, although this study is a fieldwork run in Malatya province, it is also an effort to understand and explain what is happening on a national scale. Keywords: Local Administration, Local Politics, Globalisation, Metropolitan Municipality, Integration