The Democratic Party's understanding of municipality in the case of Samsun

Municipality means an organization that suppiles public services like cleaning, lighting, water systems as well as trade audits to settlement center like cities, towns, districts, etc. Having a legal personality, it has a mayor and municipal memberes whom are elected by the public. Meanwhile, city means a system with its unique culture, transformation, historical function, value system, norms and social relations. Municipality in its contemporary sense has developed by using its own monetary sources through its administrative organs, forming an autonomous financal ? administrative structure and getting a legal personality, all of which lay the groundwork for sef administration. According to liberal approaches, local authorities anticipate a legal personality with independent and autonomous structure and its own finance Office. During the Ottoman time, local governments had been maintained until the Tanzimat (Reorganization) period by foundations and tradesman institutions. The first significant steps affecting the Reorganization period were taken during the reign of Mahmud II and İhtisab Nazırlığı was establised. The real goal of the Reformers at that period was to gather the taxes regularly and justly, perform the services orderly and maintain the public security. Thus, the concept of municipality mainly loomed large in the centers where trade was common. On the development of municipal structuring, the greatest contribution of the Meşrutiyet period (the Constitutional Monarchy) was to supply municipalities with a legal personality. Municipality received a legal personality through the `` Dersaadet Municipality Law?? and the `` Provincial Municipality Law?? issued by the Ottoman Chamber of Deputies. In this way, a limited development in relation to municipalities was managed. The Republic of Turkey took 38 municipalities from the Ottoman state. Since there was no industrialization having an important role in urbanization in Turkey, urbanization process actulized slowly in all over the country, not constituting the primary problem. Thus, construction and city planning of Ankara was placed emphasis. Yet, till 1928 it was seen taht these plans had not worked well. Meanwhile, the Ebniye Law, which had been in force since 1882 but could not keep in step with the problems of the day, was stil in force. Instead of this law which was insufficient, a municipal structuring in Ankara was composed in 1924 as the first step. The huge financial sources for municipalities suffered a great loss starting from 1930. The 1933 Municipalities and Roads Law was an important step though the city planning legislation was not prepared and problems were tried to be solved by the decisions of the Municipal Assembly. The Bank of Municipalities was founded to meet the municipal needs. The bank continued to be active together with the Science Committee till 1945, and they were merged within the body of the Bank of Provinces in 1945. Turkey performed some plans to develop urbanization in the country, some reports were prepared through the contributions of scholars. As a result, the construction works in Ankara were completed fast. When the Democratic Party?s (DP) policy on local authorities was analyzed, the broad authority of local governments can be seen though ?as can be observed- the party seem to have adopted the mentality that municipalities were dependent on the centre. The urbanization policies during the DP period were formed according to the emergence of problems in time. The central administration increased its effect on the local authorities when it undertook the responsibility of solving the problems. In this context, the municipal Works in Samsun, an important city of the Blacksea region, were performed in line with the DP policies. Electricity, water, sewage, construction plans became the primary topics of the municipality. Especially, the inauguration of the Samsun Harbor accelerated Samsun?s development, and settlement plans foreseeing Samsun?s expension towards the hillsides were drawn. Until the year 1960, the electricity, water, sewage and settlement projects were tried to be adjusted to the city?s development. However, it was observed that the plans could not meet the needs sufficiently and the municipalities had to perform their duties under the pressure of their huge debts. Key Words: Democrat Party, urbanization, local authorities, Samsun, Samsun Municipality