Abstract:

The public services performed by the state in national level for the citizens are realized by the centralized government; on the other hand, the local ones were performed by the local governments. The local governments which perform those services in local level have the powers defined in laws, specific revenue, budget, workforce, an administrative organization, the decision organs which are elected by the local people and self-government being public entities. Along with the recent changes made in 2012, the available 62 municipalities in Kahramanmaraş province, which was turned into a metropolitan municipality via the law as 6360, declined into the number as 12, and the status of the all villages with the city type municipalities in number 52 were turned into the status of neighborhoods. Meanwhile, the municipality organization of the province gained the status of metropolitan municipality, and the borders of the metropolitan municipality were determined as the lines of civil administration. Before the development as the new metropolitan municipality law, the municipalities perform services only within the borders of city and small towns as adjacent areas, but then along with new law they began to perform services for rural areas as well. As is understood, along with this regulation, it is seen that the decision was taken on expanding the borders of the metropolitan municipalities without making a functional of spatial evaluation, behaving mostly in political motives. The aim of this study is to evaluate the settlements of Kahramanmaraş province in functional aspects, and analyze the settlements as to the aspects of founding municipality organization via criteria. The scope of this study was composed of the data coming from the settlements within the borders of Kahramanmaraş province and the socio-economical and spatial dimensions of *T his study was the expanded and reviewed form of the paper which was presented in the XIth. Public Administartion Forum, having been named as “The Functional Analysis of the settlements inKahramanmaraş province which have municipality organisations.” them. Setting the conceptual framework of this study, the national and international literature review was done, via studying the related laws the attempt on determining the criteria of founding a municipality organization was performed, and owing to the data coming from TÜİK (Turkish Statistical Institute) and DPT (State Planning Organization of Turkey) in socio-economical sense, and also with the spatial data which was calculated in local, the settlements of Kahramanmaraş province were evaluated in functional aspects.

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