ABSTRACT
All important regulations made in Turkey in the local government reform process since 2004, particularly the ones in the fields of municipality administration and metropolitan municipality administration, have close ties with the neighborhood administration. Neighborhood administration, which is traditionally associated with the subsidiary services and functions of the central government, is observed to be transforming into a “neighborhood unit” after it is related, by the local government reform, to municipality administration, local services and the function of participation of the local community. However, the positive developments recorded in the transformation process of the neighborhood administrations into neighborhood units are limited by the facts that neighborhood administration is not organized as a local government unit and is not provided with the administrative and financial autonomy required to be qualified as a local government; it establishes relations with the municipality administration, municipal council and city council only via neighborhood mukhtar/headman (mahalle muhtarı); its organs have not been able to be fully turned into local government organs; and it has not been directly related to the local services. In the light of these evaluations, neighborhood administration—which is deemed quite important for the new metropolitan municipality model—should be discussed on the basis of main arguments of new regulations.
