Structural problems of great municipality administrations composition and function of decision and executive bodies in Turkey

ABSTRACT This study discusses the composition of great municipalities, municipal councils and standing committees, adopted in 1984 by the municipal law 3030, its weakness in "representative" quality within the concept of representative democracy, due to the election system of mayors in Turkey. The reliability of the observations concerning the weakness of the participatory and pluralist democratic quality of the municipal council, due to the fact that its members are not elected directly by the public is inquired. Furthermore, the profile of the council members is determined by analyzing the demographic data concerning educational background, gender, occupation and age groups of the municipal council members. The data provided by Ministry of Interior, General Directorate of Local Administration the year 2002 June was used. Data concerning 2576 council members of 16 great municipal councils was analyzed to draw some conclusions. Assuming that majority of the population live in metropolitan areas, the assesement regarding municipalities and its representative bodies is expected to reflect the general view within the country by the latest data. The results of the analysis demonstrated that the representative quality of the election system was weak; there are difficulties in realizing representation and service effectiveness due to the relation on powerful mayor and weak council; the allocation of duties and responsibilities of the decision bodies of municipal governments was not balanced. Especially the facts that there is no elected member of the council except the mayor, the public can not directly elect the standing committee members and their members increase in parallel to the population, are indicators of the municipal government structure which doesn't reflect participatory and representative democracy. It was concluded that the election freedom of people did not go beyond confirming or reflecting candidates nominated by political party decision makers. VI