Impact of Law No 6360 on rural areas: Antalya district case

The law no 6360 enacted in 2012 on metropolitan municipalities stipulated a number of amendments on various local government issues like administrative organization, fiscal structure of municipalities, political engagement of people in rural areas, the authority and responsibility areas of local government units. The number of metropolitan municipalities has risen to 30 from 16 and the towns and villages have been identified as "neighbourhoods" removing the legal corporate identities that they previously owned in accordance with the law no 6360. The objective of the study is to explore how the town municipalities and villages, having lost their legal corporate identities, got influenced by the amendments enacted by the law no 6360. Within the scope of the study, the new neighbourhoods within the borders of Antalya Metropolitan Municipality have been investigated to demonstrate the impacts of the amendments on the law. The responsibility area of Antalya Metropolitan Municipality has been extended to cover the whole city area in accordance with the law no 6360. Besides, the legal corporate identities of 74 town municipalities and 543 villages have been removed and those have been identified as neighbourhoods. In this study, 133 mukhtars (local governors) of neighbourhood have been interviewed. 20 of them were from previous town municipalities while 113 came from villages. Survey method has been used in the interviews. The outcomes of the study have demonstrated that the law has been regarded as insufficient and inappropriate in Antalya District and that Antalya Metropolitan Municipality has performed poorly to meet the infrastructure needs of the neighbourhoods like cleaning and maintenance of the roads. It was concluded that the administrative structure of the mukhtars of the neighborhood was reduced compared to the previous system and was taken negatively by the mukhtars. Key Words; The Law no 6360, Local Government, Local Governors (mukhtars), Antalya Metropolitan Municipality, Public Administration