Talk:Provinces of Turkey

Alphabetical arrangement
Why are the provinces in this article arranged by traffic plates, rather than alphabetically? -- llywrch 23:40, 4 Apr 2004 (UTC)


 * Fixed?

City/Town/Village (place name) disambiguation
There doesn't seem to be a standard here yet for local places. Some use "X, Turkey" to differentiate only from other countries. But there are multiple place names in various provinces. Could somebody give guidance as to local practice?

Noticing that "X, Turkey" form, I chose "X, P" without the trailing "Province", guessing that might be the way that surface mail is addressed (as it is in some nearby Balkans), and trying to conform to local practice. But it's not pretty as the article title.

Would "X, P Province" be better?

Or "X, P Province, Turkey"?

Or take advantage of the pipe hack: "X (P Province, Turkey)"? (Prettiest from the point of view of both naming articles and editting.)

Specifically, so far, Kozan, Adana (stub), Mut, Adana (doesn't yet exist). William Allen Simpson 13:33, 5 December 2005 (UTC)


 * I'm not sure what you mean by the letter P in your examples, but you know, this is a very good question. The standard for the doing this on Turkish Wikipedia seems to be "City, Province" if the city is not the same as the province.  For cities that ARE the same name as provinces (iller), they distinguish between the city, calling it "center" merkez, or they will call it "province" il, for example Ankara (merkez).


 * I hardly think this is a good example to follow for English Wikipedia, where the standard seems to show that the city name should be used if it is well known in the Western World, for example see Tarsus will give you a disambig page, where you can choose Tarsus (city). Tarsus is not a province itself, and it is actually one of the largest cities in Turkey that does not have its own province; it is attached to Mersin.  My best guess would be to follow the English that says to just name the city if there is no ambiguity about the name.  If there is another city in the world with the same name, then calling it City, Turkey, would be best, and if there are more examples of such cities in Turkey, then City, Province, Turkey would be appropriate.


 * Thanks for bringing up the concern, it made me think a bit.
 * Karma Heretic 16:39, 7 December 2005 (UTC)
 * agree with Karma. But in some countries they avoid things like Ankara, Turkey and allways use the state/province name to disambig. In Latin American countries lots of places even within countries have the same name. So X, Countryname does not help much. Instead X, Statename is used. Tobias Conradi (Talk) 23:22, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

--William Allen Simpson (talk) 03:47, 6 June 2009 (UTC)
 * I have only recently discovered that Tobias Conradi is on a jihad to make every country's entries conform to his one-size-fits-all uniform template. I was asking the best thing to do for this country, based on local practices. Thank you for information about the Turkish Wikipedia.
 * William Allen Simpson 12:49, 9 December 2005 (UTC)
 * are you a sock-puppet? you are in WP since 2005-11-15 but very agressive in your attitude. Tobias Conradi (Talk) 14:11, 9 December 2005 (UTC)
 * As is often the case, this user turned out to be doing exactly what he accused others of doing:
 * That is, many sockpuppets, and has been banned for some time.
 * That is, many sockpuppets, and has been banned for some time.

Hi! As I'm a Turkish citizen and user of Turkish wikipedia, I can provide you some very certain knowledge: Administrative division of Turkey is so:
 * Turkish Republic > Province (İl) > District (İlçe) > Village (Köy)

(there are a few administratively different units which is called "belde" in Turkish language, a belde is smaller than "district" and bigger than a "village", "belde"s are rare)

Remember that Turkey is not a federal system like the USA, Turkey is France-kind administrative system... Now, the province Ankara is an administrative division, let me write an example:
 * "I'm going to Ankara 7 pm tomorrow" (This Ankara is the city, we never use the names for administrative divisions, and this is the point almost the names of all 81 provinces use some city's name which is generally the biggest city of the province)
 * --Tuleytula (talk) 22:34, 5 June 2009 (UTC)


 * Look at that picture on the right.Tokat_districts.png When you or me talk about Tokat, it's just the city Tokat inside the map (it's written as Tokat merkezi, but we colloquially never use the word "merkezi" for center cities of Provinces, that's the point what makes some foreigners be confused), not the whole Tokat province. When Government talks about Tokat, it's the whole province sometimes, and sometimes it's the city Tokat. When you write a town of Tokat Province, it must be written as e.g. Erbaa, Tokat in Turkish Wikipedia. But when there is no other Erbaa...Then you again must name it as Erbaa, Tokat... :) In colloquial speech, you never say it as e.g. "tr:Dereli, Giresun". You just say "...Dereli..."
 * I hope it's useful.--Tuleytula (talk) 23:33, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

--William Allen Simpson (talk) 03:47, 6 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Thank you. I'd not been involved in this discussion for some years, but hopefully this will help standardize inter-wiki links.

diacriticals, lower case "p"rovince
Now that the guidelines have finally been changed, how much effort should be put into moving the province pages from "P"rovince to "p"rovince? I see that Muğla province was done a month ago.
 * --William Allen Simpson 15:53, 9 January 2006 (UTC)

But when Muğla province was moved, they forgot to update the bold name. I fixed both the province and the city, and added sections and external links. Hopefully, more will be done in the same manner as time permits.
 * --William Allen Simpson 17:45, 9 January 2006 (UTC)

Administrative divisions
The consensus currently reflected in the language of Naming conventions (places) is:


 * Example: the country has "oblasts" and its government officially translates them as "area", "region", or "zone", then they should never be renamed "province" to conform to another country or some master schema.


 * The testimony of locals and people familiar with the country should be considered above Google evidence....

Just trying to follow those guidelines. (But then, I helped write them.)


 * Forgot to mention that the dictionary translates il to both "province" and "county", and ilçe to "county". That's why I wanted to be extra sure that "district" was the best official word for ilçe.
 * --William Allen Simpson

Each district, ilçe, (including the central district) commands a specific area, each has boundaries, within the province. The area depends administratively to the district central (ilçe merkezi, not to confuse with merkez ilçe) where resides the appointed kaymakam, head official for that district, who is answerable to the governor. Central districts do not have kaymakams, they are administered by a vice-governor.

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

At the bottom end, there are villages, who have elected muhtars taking care specific administrative matters. 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 similar but adapted to their locality.

In some cases, a belde can be larger that the district center it depends, and a district center can be larger than the central district it depends, and many other district centers. One final note is the büyükşehir belediyesi, larger municipalities for megalopoles like İstanbul or İzmir, which have at their top an elected head mayor who oversee a number of municipalities and mayors.

I think district is the term that fits best. I did also think of township, but district matches, in my opinion, better. --Cretanforever 09:53, 14 January 2006 (UTC)

I think let the translation be left to Turkish native speakers as they would know best the tiny differences between such things... --Teemeah Gül Bahçesi  08:53, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

Kurdistan
26 provinces of turkey are KURDISTAN. They have Kurdish population and are an undivided parts of KURDISTAN. The history has proven it, if you look at ethnic maps or map of Kurdistan, you will see that 29 provinces of Turket are parts of Kurdistan. The Northern Kurdistanian provinces (occupated by Turkey) are: KARS, IGDIR, AGRI, VAN (WAN), HAKKARI (COLEMÊERG), SIRNAK, SIIRT (SÊRT), BITLIS, MUS, ERZURUM, ERZINCAN, BINGÖL (CEWLIK), BATMAN, MARDIN, DIYARBAKIR (AMED), TUNCELI (DÊRSÎM), ELAZIG (ELIH), MALATYA (MELETÎ), ADIYAMAN, SANLIURFA (RIHA), GAZIANTEP (ENTAP), KILIS, HATAY, OSMANIYE, KAHRAMANMARAS (MERES) anD SIVAS (SÊWAS) - THEY ALL ARE KURDIAN, PARTS OF KURDISTAN. Look at the histry book, ethnic maps and the map of Kurdistan - that the Kurds haven't done by themselves - you will see they are all KURDISTAN. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.217.141.25 (talk) 2007-04-29 11:59:32 (UTC)


 * You are the same guy at the talk page of Sivas. We formed this country with blood, steel and self sacrifice. We defeated France, the symbol of the imperialist west, at Gaziantep, Kahramanmaraş and at Şanlıurfa. All three cities were given the honour to carry the titles of "Ghazi", "Hero" and "Glorious" in front of their names. France thought that Şırnak would surrender immediately but the people of the city united against the invasion and forced the attackers to change their plans. Mustafa Kemal united the nation in Sivas which marked an important point at the Turkish War of Independence. The parliament of Hatay itself decided to join Turkey. We can find uncountable number of data to show how the people of Anatolia are united. All cities that you count are the free and glorious parts of the Republic of Turkey. Deliogul 19:30, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

Mersin
I thought that Mersin was officially named as İçel and so would fit the pattern of alphabetical province names for the licence plate codes until Zonguldak? 92.9.132.114 (talk) 18:37, 23 September 2009 (UTC)

Population numbers
The table displaying population of provinces and of province capitals is providing incorrect numbers. The reference, 2009 Turkstat website, does not respond. Bursa city is NOT the 3rd largest city in Turkey. No matter what criterion is used to define the "province capital" (city proper, metropolitan municipality or agglomeration), Izmir has a greater population than Bursa. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 128.12.151.87 (talk) 09:20, 11 July 2011 (UTC)
 * The problem is that the information from the table is very mixed, some figures being from old censuses and others being more up-to-date statistics, without any clarification as to which is which. The second problem is the use of different definitions as to which "agglomeration" calculations should be used.
 * I have replaced all the "agglomeration" figures by those for the cities themselves (figures on agglomerations righly belong in the individual articles on those disparate cities) and I have inserted the date "2000 Census" at the pop of the provincial population column (altering the more recent figures to the 2000 Census figures so that all statistics are chronologically compatable; I have introduced a second column for provincial populations showing a more up-to-date year (2007), although of course I am happy that someone can update this column, PROVIDED that they update ALL the populations in that column to one single year. I have also corrected the area figures to include recent remeasurements, and recalculatred the population density figures. Finally, the column for the population of capitals is now showing the data from the 2000 Census for ALL cities (not agglomerations), so all figures in this column are directly comparable. Please note ALL the figures used are taken from the State Institute of Statistics, Turkey (SIS) published statistics. Rif Winfield (talk) 12:06, 13 January 2013 (UTC)

etymologies?
It'd be nice to have the province name meanings in English. Can anyone help? Thanks, --Kintetsubuffalo (talk) 09:37, 22 December 2017 (UTC)

Issues with area data
Hello, I am aware of a PDF file on a Turkish government website, which appears to have area sizes different to the ones here, but I have no idea about the accuracy of the numbers used by both the government and Wikipedia, due to the lack of references.

Someone needs to dig deeper to verify which area values are true for both the provinces and districts, and if necessary, consolidate the sources for the area data for Turkey.

Best, -- Minoa (talk) 20:34, 1 October 2019 (UTC)