The analysis of the sivil and political character of the city councils in Turkey

According to the liberal approach, local governments were born as part of civil society in the Western world. As a part of civil society, local governments rely on participation and are therefore democratic. Nowadays, it is observed that civil society's city councils are being established to re-democratize the local governments that have become a part of the political society. Are the city councils a part of civil society or political? The thesis study aims to analyze the civil and political character of the city councils. Thesis was composed of three chapters in order to analyze the civil and political character of the city councils: (1) analyzing the character of city councils within the founding documents, (2) examination of the legal development of city councils in Turkey, (3) field research conducted with the representatives of the seven city councils of İstanbul. In the first part, the documents generated in the process which started with Local Agenda 21 analyzed and civic / political character of the city councils are tried to be analyzed. In the second part of the thesis, the legal development of city councils in Turkey discussed. In the last part, the results of semi-structured interviews conducted with representatives of city councils are discussed. Along with the analysis done within the thesis study, it is seen that the city councils are obviously an extension of the political field and the character of the civil society remained weak. In this context, the city councils have not been able to show a legal structure according to the character they were born and developed. Keywords: City Assembles, civil society, political society, Local Agenda 21, local governance