Districts of Turkey

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Districts of Turkey

The provinces of Turkey are divided into 923 districts (ilçeler; sing. ilçe). In the early Turkish Republic and in the Ottoman Empire, the corresponding unit was the kaza.

The district usually bears the same name as the district capital (with the exception of the districts of Antakya (in Hatay), İzmit (in Kocaeli), and Adapazarı (in Sakarya).

A district may cover both rural and urban areas. One district of a province is the "central district" (merkez ilçe); the central district is administered by an appointed "vice-governor" and other districts by a "sub-governor" (kaymakam). Each municipality (belediye) in the urban zone (belde) of a district is an administrative division subject to elections depending on the province.

Each district (including the central district) corresponds to a specific area within the province. The area is administered from the "district center" (ilçe merkezi, not to be confuse with "central district" merkez ilçe), where resides the appointed kaymakam, the head official for that district, who is responsible to the province governor. Central districts do not have kaymakams, they are administered by a vice-governor.

All district centers have municipalities (belediye), headed by an elected mayor, who administers a defined municipality area (usually matching the urban zone) for defined municipal matters. A growing number of settlements, which are outside of district centers, have municipalities as well, usually because their population requires one. These are (also) called belde. They haven't (yet) become district centers because there is one close by, or due to some other reason. A belde has a mayor (responsible for its municipal zone), but not a kaymakam, and depends administratively on the district center of the district within whose boundaries it is situated.

At the bottom end, there are villages, who have elected muhtars taking care of specific administrative matters such as residence registration. Furthermore, each quarter (mahalle) of a district center and belde has a muhtar as well, also for specific administrative questions. The designation slightly differs (köy muhtarı for village muhtar, mahalle muhtarı for quarter muhtar) and also the tasks, which are largely similar but adapted to their locality.

In some cases, a belde has become larger than the district center it depends on, and a district center larger than the central district it depends on (and many other district centers). One final note is the büyükşehir belediyesi (or greater municipality) for metropolises like İstanbul or İzmir, an extra administrative layer which has at its top an elected head mayor, who oversee a number of municipalities and mayors.

The districts are listed below, by province (with capital district in bold text):