Internationalization of loacal governments and their contribution in making foreign policy

The globalization has the meaning of a process, which any economic, social, cultural and political matters occur in anywhere in the developed and globalized world have affects over other communities of the world and it cause to increase at the interrelations between the communities more and more.As the result of technological revolution and applied neo liberal policies, the urbanization and globalization processes change the operation and shaping of characteristics and structure of today?s nation-states and the operation and shaping of the current world order.The local governments, which were mostly perceived as one of low administrative level of the traditional state apparatus and its main function is to provide conducting the public services by means of the management unit which is closest to the community in order to achieve scale economy and efficient use of resources, has been begun to be assumed and named as the fundamental units of democratic government together with the increasing importance of the participation of the community in government. These foundations, which have entered in a functional and qualitative transformation process with their development lived in recent periods, are being subject to a different positioning regarding their economic, social and political dimensions together with the globalization.The strategic positions of urbanized areas that have over economic, political and sociocultural developments cause them to have a more and more increasing effectiveness atinternational arena. The international agenda items increasingly include also local issues.The organization of the local government among them goes from strength to strength witheach passing day and the interest of international organizations in local governments increase accordingly and as the result of this process, the local governments are being positioned again in the national and international scales together with the globalization.The internationalization of the local governments in parallel to the globalization and theiraffects over foreign affairs are discussed and the developments in Turkey are analyzed inscope of the European Union membership process. Following the introduction part of thestudy, the historical development of local governments, relation between globalization and local governance, functional and qualitative transformation process and the analyses related with this issue are given place in second chapter and contributions of local governments in foreign policy making and local governments? occupying more place at international arena and arising of decentralization are analyzed in third chapter. And in the fourth chapter, the contributions of local governments in the democratization process and relation between the democratization and local government in Turkey within this scope and the democratization projects in Turkey supported by European Union are given place.