Constitutional Principles for Local Government Reform

The retrospective evaluation of decentralization in highly centralized Turkish Public Administration has begun since 1960s. Decentralization attempts have generally been too weak to make any significant changes in legal rules and practice. The legislation carried out in the 2000s has the capacity to reduce centralization with some radical changes. However, some significant rules in this legislation were declared unconstitutional and annulled by the Constitutional Court, while the others did not give the expected results in practice. At this point, the approximately 50 years of reform efforts cannot be construed as successful attempts to convert local governments into efficient, participatory, transparent and autonomous centres of power by reducing centralization. There have been several reasons for the failure of reform initiatives; one of these is the constitutional principles consolidating the centralized structure of public administration. It seems that making a radical reform by legal arrangements without amending these principles is not possible. This article will evaluate reform efforts relating to local governments with regard to constitutional principles.