Consequences of reverting settlements to village status under Law no. 6360: The case of Çorum province

One of the most recent and radical changes regarding local governments in the Turkish public administration is Law No. 6360 on the "Establishment of Metropolitan Municipalities and Twenty-Seven Districts in Fourteen Provinces and Amendments to Certain Laws and Legislative Decrees", which increased the number of metropolitan municipalities in Turkey to 30 and did not define the provincial borders as the boundaries of metropolitan municipalities. According to the results of the 2011 Address-Based Population Census, the legal entities of municipalities with a population of less than 2,000 were abolished and converted into villages with the temporary article 2 of the same law. The number of towns transformed into villages in provinces without metropolitan status is 559. In the province of Çorum, 20 towns have been transformed into villages, while 2 towns still have the status of municipalities. The aim of this study is to explain the change in the social and economic situation of the old towns that were reduced to village status, specifically in Çorum province. Our basic assumption is that Law 6360 has negatively affected villages socially and economically. In all the old towns that have been transformed into villages, the data obtained through in-depth interviews with semi-structured questions were analysed. The results confirm our hypothesis. This study aims to contribute to the Turkish public administration literature, especially to explain how the laws produce results in practice with concrete examples.