Kırsal alan tanımı ve Türkiye'de kırsal kalkınma projelerinin mekansal dağılımının incelenmesi: IPARD Ankara örneği

The concept of “rural” and definition of “rural area” had been controversial since they appear on the literature. Even though rural has been assumed as the opposite of the urban for a long period of time, these two terms are not the opposite but the complementary terms. Therefore, rural development is not an effort to transfer rural areas into urban. Moreover, rural area definition has been evolved by governments, international organizations, and academicians throughout the time. Consequently, development of rural areas has always been problematic because of various reasons including problems about the definition of rural area. Rural development studies and efforts have been made since the establishment of the Turkish Republic and rural areas have been defined by administrative borders and population for long years in Turkey until Turkey’s European Union Candidacy announcement. On one hand, “Law on Amendment of Some Law and Decree Law via Establishment of Metropolitan Municipality in The Fourteen Provinces and Twenty-Seven Districts” has been issued and metropolitan cities have their villages changed into neighborhoods and rural areas at metropolitan cities have lost their legal status since 2012. On the other hand, IPARD, EU’s structural funds for rural development of pre-accession countries, has been implemented in Turkey since 2011. Ankara, which is the capital city of Turkey, is one of the beneficiaries of IPARD and has its villages transferred into neighborhoods and lost their legal status. In this context, there is an uncertainty about rural area definition and spatial allocation of IPARD projects regarding to rural and urban area definitions. Main purpose of this thesis is to find out the spatial distribution of IPARD projects in Ankara, reasons of this distribution, relation of this distribution to definition of urban and rural, and the status of these projects by analyzing projects according to districts of Ankara and by contacting relevant authorities and beneficiaries.Thesis (M.S.) -- Graduate School of Natural and Applied Sciences. City and Regional Planning