THE ROLE OF MUNICIPALITIES IN ALLEVIATING POVERTY: THE CASE OF METROPOLITAN MUNICIPALITY OF MALATYA

Poverty has always been an issue of concern throughout the history, however, today it’s more significant, therefore, most countries on the world have developed various methods to alleviate poverty depending on their administrative, social and cultural structures and financial means. In this context, besides central administrations, these countries assigned more important roles to local administrations in alleviating the problem. One of these countries is Turkey. Following legal reforms in the 2000s, along with central administrations, local administrations, that is municipalities, were given authority and responsibilities to tackle with poverty. During 2004 and 2005 and through the laws 5216 and 5393, many responsibilities and tasks regarding social policies and services against poverty in local areas were assigned to municipalities and municipalities have been one of the main administration units of this task in these areas. In 2012, the law 6360 was endorsed for both better administration structures and wider municipal services in local areas. Therefore, in alleviating poverty, an important step forward was taken to make municipalities a strong and a responsible local administration along with central administrations. The study includes socio-economic policies locally conducted by the Metropolitan Municipality of Malatya (MMM) in Turkey and aims to evaluate whether the policies might alleviate or reduce the problem.

Keywords

Poverty, Municipalities, Alleviating Poverty, Social Work, Local Administrations.