Public policies alternative towards eliminating regional disparities: The Turkish case

The study begins with a review of different approaches analysing regional disparities and alternative policies dealing with these disparities. Public policies, in most cases, are decisive to reduce regional imbalances. Therefore, various public policies and their efficiency are analysed within the Turkish context. Turkey, like many countries, has disparities between its regions in terms of economic and social development originating from geographical and historical conditions. As a first step, the current state of the regional disparities in Turkey is examined based on the criteria such as population density, urbanisation, industry, agriculture, labour, distribution of public investments, educational and health services, and other social indicators. At the second step, alternative public policies implemented in different periods towards eliminating regional disparities are evaluated. The efficiency of policies during the pre- 1960 situation and "planned period" which has started in 1960 is researched. As a conclusion, various alternatives are discussed to increase the efficiency of existing policies. Also, conditions for the success of different policies proposed in various reports are tried to be determined.