The effect of law no. 6360 on people's perception of municipality: The case of Maçka

A part of Türkiye's modernization history is the effort to establish modern local governments. It is observed that the legislators made an effort in this direction in the last periods of the Ottoman Era and throughout the Republican Era. Various new local government units have been created and sometimes these institutions have been rearranged according to the needs. The metropolitan municipalities, which were created with the hope of being a solution to the urban problems created by the rapid urbanization in the metropolitan cities in the middle of the 20th century in Türkiye, are one of them. It has been 38 years since the first metropolitan municipality law was passed in 1984. During this period, metropolitan municipalities were expanded throughout the country and underwent many changes, including the rewriting of the metropolitan law. The last of these changes in the current situation is the changes brought by the Law No. 6360. With the changes brought by this law, not only the metropolitan municipalities, but the entire local government system has been changed and the metropolitan municipalities have become the second provincial administration model of Türkiye alongside the special provincial administrations. In this study, it was investigated how the changes brought by the Law No. 6360 changed the public perception of the municipality. For this research, Maçka district of Trabzon, which is one of the provinces where a metropolitan municipality was established with the Law No. 6360, was chosen. For this purpose, a survey study was conducted with 220 subjects selected by random sampling method in Maçka. With the analysis of the data obtained, it was concluded that the municipality perception of the people of Maçka was negatively affected as a result of the changes brought by the Law No. 6360. Although the reasoning of the Law No. 6360 foresees an opposite result, according to the results of the analysis, it has emerged that municipalities have not made any progress in terms of service, participation, representation and prestige in the eyes of the public. Keywords: Local Administirations in Turkey, Municipalities, Metropolitan Municipalities, Law No. 6360