New regionalism in Turkey: questioning the "new' and the "regional'


Sezgin E.

EUROPEAN PLANNING STUDIES, cilt.26, sa.4, ss.653-669, 2018 (SSCI) identifier identifier

  • Yayın Türü: Makale / Tam Makale
  • Cilt numarası: 26 Sayı: 4
  • Basım Tarihi: 2018
  • Doi Numarası: 10.1080/09654313.2017.1403571
  • Dergi Adı: EUROPEAN PLANNING STUDIES
  • Derginin Tarandığı İndeksler: Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI), Scopus
  • Sayfa Sayıları: ss.653-669
  • İstanbul Teknik Üniversitesi Adresli: Evet

Özet

Turkey's regional policies are inspired by the new regionalism theory. During past two decades, key concepts of new regionalism, including knowledge economies, specialization, networked cities and innovation, have been incorporated in policy documents. At the same time, Turkey comes from a strong central state tradition that controls local and regional development. At first insight, new regionalism and strong central state control do not fit in the same frame. This research analyses the trajectory of regional policies in Turkey with the aim of explaining how these seemingly incompatible policies can coexist. It argues that regional policies developed at the central state level utilized new regionalism as a part of the strategy to maintain power in the course of transformation of the nation state.