Özet:

Regional development, defined as increasing the capacitiy of a certain area boundaries and  the quality of life and economic futures of those living in this area, has come to the fore with realization of regional imbalances after the Second World War. The arguments introduced by the Keynesian and neoclassical approaches that have been influential on policies applied until 1970s for reduce to regional imbalances have not been enough for close to interregional differences. However, changes in economic conditions and the rise of globalization have revived to new theorisation efforts for re-make sense of regional economies. Economic geography have been at the center of these studies, while institutional and evolutionary approaches that began to develop after the 1980s attempted to redefine of region and regional / local economic development concepts within the framework of post-fordism debates. In this context, this study aims to provide a new perspective on the regional development studies in Turkey, by demonstrating the strengths and weaknesses of the road dependence and locking approach which are expressed that evolutionary economic geography best explains regional development. The study is a literature review and it is concluded that the epistemological and ontological problems revealed are caused by the limitations of the methods and techniques used in empirical studies. Therefore, a number of suggestions are made to emphasize that the methods and techniques to be used should be diversified.

Anahtar Kelimeler: