Abstract:

While the population of Turkey increased approximately 6.13 times between 1927 and 2020, the population of Kütahya increased only 2.17 times. According to the exact number of immigrants between 1975-2020, Kütahya is the second province in the Aegean Region with the highest number of immigrants after Afyonkarahisar. In addition, as of December 31, 2020, considering the difference between the population living in the research area although registered to another and the population living in other provinces although registered to the area in which the study is conducted, it is seen that Kütahya has a migration deficit of 164,331 people. In the population movements that occur within the research area and the migration to other places, respectively; there are reasons such as unemployment and economic problems, difficulties in accessing education and health services, and the social and cultural attractiveness of large settlements. Since these reasons that push people to migrate are mostly seen in rural areas, it is possible to say that the direction of migration in the province is towards cities both within and outside the study area. As a matter of fact, if we look at the history of the province in the Republic Period in terms of rural and urban population, the decrease in the ratio of rural population from 85.8% in 1950 to 28.1% in 2020 confirms that the direction of migration in the province is towards cities both within and outside the study area. Accordingly, due to migrations occurring in the field; the population of cities such as Kütahya, Tavşanlı, Simav, Emet and Gediz has increased. As a result, the urban population ratio in the research area increased from 14.2% in 1950 to 71.9% in 2020. Migrations outside the research area were mostly made to provinces such as Izmir, Istanbul, Bursa, Manisa, Uşak, Eskişehir, Antalya, Ankara and Kocaeli. The main reason for these migrations is that industrial investments in the field cannot adequately meet the employment needs of the increasing province population. Moreover, the privatization of state-owned enterprises that employed thousands of people in the province since 2004 has significantly increased the pace of these migrations.

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