{"status":"success","message":"getAllItems successful","data":{"items":[{"_id":"6aece0d16ca0dcbbf489a4ae","title":"The Heading of Article 6 on the Equalisation Allowance in Law No. 5779 Has Been Amended","slug":"law-5779-article-6-equalisation-allowance-amendment","language":"en","isDefaultTranslation":false,"content":"

The heading of Article 6, entitled “Equalisation Allowance”, in Law No. 5779 on Allocating Shares of General Budget Tax Revenues to Special Provincial Administrations and Municipalities has been amended.

Legislation providing budgetary assistance to municipalities has been enacted.

51% of İller Bankası’s net profit may be made available to local governments without applying population or infrastructure sector criteria.

Original supporting material (in Turkish).

","date":"2026-03-14","images":[],"type":"degerlendirme","featuredImage":"","summary":"The heading of Article 6, previously entitled “Equalisation Allowance”, in Law No. 5779 on Allocating Shares of General Budget Tax Revenues to Special Provincial Administrations and Municipalities has been amended.","status":"published","sections":[],"publishDate":"2026-03-14","categoryIds":["42be73c1-9af4-499b-ad65-78beab6de0ad"],"id":"770acfca-0c31-4881-83ef-bd2ca6f8bdc7","createdAt":"2026-11-05T20:02:25.683Z","updatedAt":"2026-11-05T20:02:32.352Z","translationGroup":"3c8ecc19-4f6f-4bf0-9d09-cd6579f92693","header":"","metaTitle":"","metaDescription":""},{"_id":"6aece0c46ca0dcbbf489a481","title":"Key Considerations for Municipalities Preparing Strategic Plans After the Local Elections of 31 March 2019","slug":"municipal-strategic-planning-after-2019-local-elections","language":"en","isDefaultTranslation":false,"content":"

Following the local elections of 31 March 2019, many municipalities will begin preparing new strategic plans. The third edition of the Strategic Planning Guide for Public Administrations, published in 2018, introduces important changes to both preparation and content. Municipalities should take these changes into account. Guidance has also been differentiated by institution type. Although still a draft, the Strategic Planning Guide for Municipalities provides guidance for municipal planning.

Article 18 of the Regulation on the Procedures and Principles of Strategic Planning in Public Administrations, dated 26 February 2018, allows a local government to renew its strategic plan when its chief executive changes. Newly elected mayors may therefore be expected to renew municipal strategic plans to guide decisions over the next five years in line with their objectives. Municipalities whose census populations have exceeded 50,000 during this period are also required to prepare strategic plans.

Municipalities renewing their plans must take a renewal decision, with the mayor’s approval, within three months. Renewal means preparing a new plan before the previous plan expires, following all the procedures applicable to a new plan. All planning analyses must be repeated, the objectives and targets framework rebuilt, and the plan must cover five years from implementation. Plans prepared after the elections will cover 2020–2024.

The 2003 and 2006 strategic planning guides adopted a single common approach for all public administrations. In 2018, separate guides were developed for central public administrations, universities, publicly owned enterprises and municipalities. Although based on common principles, they differ according to institutional service characteristics. The new guides seek to:

Strengthen the links between strategic plans and other core components of strategic management.
Improve effectiveness in resource use and the prioritisation of objectives and targets.
Improve performance evaluation to support evidence-based decisions.
Improve reporting quality and strengthen transparency and accountability in public administration.

One important change is the clearer organisation of the strategic planning process. The 2018 guidance of the former Ministry of Development, now within the remit of the Presidency of Strategy and Budget, identifies the following roles:

Mayor: Provides direction for mission and vision statements, resolves high-level disputed issues and approves the plan.
Strategy Development Board: In metropolitan municipalities, comprises the secretary-general, deputy secretaries-general and other managers or individuals designated by the mayor. In non-metropolitan provincial and district municipalities, comprises deputy mayors and other managers or individuals designated by the mayor. It approves the strategic planning team and preparation programme, reviews key stages and outputs, ensures active participation by spending units and resolves disputed issues.
Strategic Planning Team: Prepares the plan’s content.
Spending Units: Contribute through their team representatives and, where necessary, directly on issues within their remit.
Strategy Development Unit: Coordinates planning activities.

A preparation programme should identify the activities and timetable for strategic planning. Identifying training, consultancy and financial resource needs at this stage is also important for a smooth process.

The new guide requires the following situation analyses:

Institutional history.
Evaluation of the current strategic plan.
Legislative analysis.
Analysis of higher-level policy documents.
Identification of activity areas, products and services.
Stakeholder analysis.
Internal organisational analysis.
Political, economic, social, technological, legal and environmental (PESTLE) analysis.
Strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats (SWOT) analysis.

The guide particularly emphasises a strong link between analytical findings and the targets framework. Findings are consolidated in a “findings and needs” table: findings identify existing problems, while needs identify areas for institutional improvement. Another important change is the consolidation of information for each target into a single “target card”. Each card must present indicators, responsible and cooperating units, risks, activities and projects, cost estimates, findings and needs. To simplify presentation, the guide also limits the number of entries under these headings.

Source: Draft Strategic Planning Guide for Municipalities (2018), www.sp.gov.tr.

The guide also introduces a set of 85 municipal performance indicators to promote standardisation. Relevant indicators—such as the share of the population connected to the drinking and domestic water network, passengers carried per municipal bus, and bicycle lane length—may be used directly. Municipalities may also develop other indicators to measure their own targets.

Monitoring and evaluation receive greater emphasis. The guide clarifies these processes and defines responsibilities more explicitly than previous editions. Establishing monitoring systems, improving data infrastructure and strengthening reporting quality can therefore be expected to become more prominent on municipal management agendas.

Original supporting material (in Turkish).

$\"\"$ \n $\"\"$ ","date":"2026-03-14","images":[],"type":"degerlendirme","summary":"Strategic plans are the principal tool for defining municipalities’ medium- and long-term policy and programme priorities. This note reviews changes introduced by the 2018 planning guidance.","status":"published","publishDate":"2026-03-14","sections":[],"categoryIds":["42be73c1-9af4-499b-ad65-78beab6de0ad"],"id":"bf827bbe-63dc-495e-9e76-d6b6eaaa68e1","createdAt":"2026-11-05T20:02:12.475Z","updatedAt":"2026-11-05T20:02:18.783Z","translationGroup":"9956af82-e525-41a8-93a4-c5b61c48e7bf","header":"","metaTitle":"","metaDescription":""},{"_id":"6aece0936ca0dcbbf489a476","title":"Should Municipalities Prepare Investment Programmes?","slug":"should-municipalities-prepare-investment-programmes","language":"en","isDefaultTranslation":false,"content":"

Investment expenditure has reached a significant share of local government budgets. In 2016, investment accounted for approximately 35% of total local government budgets, around 40% in special provincial administrations and around 30% in municipalities. Including goods and services of an investment nature increases these shares further.

While special provincial administrations commonly prepare investment programmes during budget preparation, municipalities lack an institutionalised investment programming process within their budget cycle.

The primary legislation governing municipalities, metropolitan municipalities and special provincial administrations clearly provides for investment programmes. In municipalities, however, there is no established framework comparable to central government practice for preparing these programmes and linking them to strategic plans, performance programmes and budgets. In particular, the absence of standard provisions in the Local Government Budget and Accounting Regulation hinders consistent budget preparation.

The relevant legislative provisions include the following:

Article 18 of Municipal Law No. 5393 lists the discussion and approval of strategic plans, investment and work programmes, and performance criteria for municipal activities and personnel among the council’s principal responsibilities. Law No. 5302 on Special Provincial Administrations contains the same provision.
Both laws stipulate that external borrowing under Law No. 4749 on Regulating Public Finance and Debt Management may be undertaken solely to finance projects included in the investment programme. Bond issuance is likewise tied to financing projects in that programme under the relevant legislation.
Article 7 of Metropolitan Municipality Law No. 5216 requires metropolitan municipalities to prepare their strategic plans, annual targets, investment programmes and corresponding budgets after consulting district municipalities.
Article 8, concerning infrastructure services, provides for joint programmes and investment projects through the infrastructure coordination centre. Its principal purpose is to coordinate infrastructure investments in district municipalities’ investment programmes across metropolitan areas.
Article 25 requires district budgets to be submitted to the metropolitan municipal council, which approves them, with or without amendments, to ensure coherence between investments and services. This includes adding the appropriations required for investments in the joint investment programme.
Article 27, governing intermunicipal service relations and coordination, provides for metropolitan municipalities to develop joint projects and undertake investments with district municipalities. Subject to an appropriation and a ceiling of 10% of the latest finalised annual budget revenue, metropolitan municipalities may provide financial and in-kind assistance for projects in district investment programmes, upon the metropolitan mayor’s proposal and the council’s decision. Where an investment concerns the metropolitan municipality and one or more affiliated entities, and centralised implementation would reduce costs, the metropolitan council may assign implementation to one of those entities.

These provisions clearly establish the need for municipalities and special provincial administrations to prepare and implement investment programmes. Although a legal requirement, investment programming receives insufficient attention in practice. Under the metropolitan model introduced by Law No. 6360, its role as a functional tool for coordinating investments among municipalities at provincial level has become even more important.

Many municipalities do not prepare investment programmes. Many of those that do treat them as formal documents resembling Schedule G, which lists multi-year budget investments. This creates significant financing and efficiency problems in investment planning and budgeting. Preparing investment programmes is therefore both a legislative requirement and a consequence of modern financial management: it supports the economical, efficient and effective allocation and use of public resources envisaged by local government legislation and Public Financial Management and Control Law No. 5018.

","date":"2026-03-14","images":[],"type":"degerlendirme","summary":"Investment accounted for approximately 35% of total local government budgets in 2016, rising to around 40% in special provincial administrations and around 30% in municipalities.","status":"published","sections":[],"publishDate":"2026-03-14","categoryIds":["42be73c1-9af4-499b-ad65-78beab6de0ad"],"id":"74a23bbc-7a37-4564-a287-efec01da4525","createdAt":"2026-11-05T20:01:23.690Z","updatedAt":"2026-11-05T20:01:29.629Z","translationGroup":"873f7a3b-71d4-4796-9b76-0f075c0b25d6","header":"","metaTitle":"","metaDescription":""},{"_id":"6aece0866ca0dcbbf489a44b","title":"Why Should Municipalities with Populations Below 50,000 Prepare Performance Programmes?","slug":"why-municipalities-below-50000-should-prepare-performance-programmes","language":"en","isDefaultTranslation":false,"content":"

How local governments can deliver the services they are responsible for with the resources available is also a financial management issue. Grounded in the right to budgetary oversight, local budgets serve as a means of scrutinising how administrators exercise the authority delegated to them. Another important budget function is to guide administrators in prioritising services and identifying the future costs of decisions taken today. Fulfilling this planning and management role requires an effective performance programme that follows the strategic plan within a performance-based budgeting framework.

Local governments prepare performance programmes within the framework introduced by Law No. 5018, Article 32 of Municipal Law No. 5393, the Regulation on Performance Programmes to Be Prepared by Public Administrations published by the Ministry of Finance on 5 July 2008, and the Budget and Accounting Regulation. Exercising its authority under Article 9 of Law No. 5018, the Ministry also published the Performance Programme Preparation Guide in 2009 to standardise practice.

A performance programme links the strategic plan to the budget. It sets annual targets corresponding to the medium- and long-term objectives and targets in strategic plans, identifies the activities and projects required to achieve them, and specifies their resource needs. It also includes performance indicators for measuring, monitoring and evaluating the extent to which performance targets are achieved (Performance Programme Preparation Guide, 2009). While strategic plans primarily connect institutional priorities, objectives and targets with national, regional and other plans, performance programmes establish the link between planning and budgeting.

One issue debated in practice is whether municipalities that are not required to prepare strategic plans should nevertheless prepare performance programmes. Law No. 5018, Municipal Law No. 5393 and the Budget and Accounting Regulation point towards performance-based municipal budgeting. However, a 2009 amendment to Article 1(2) of the Regulation on Performance Programmes to Be Prepared by Public Administrations, published in Official Gazette No. 26927 on 5 July 2008, exempted administrations without a strategic planning obligation from preparing performance programmes. In our view, this exemption, absent from the original regulation, was introduced as a temporary response to limited technical capacity in municipalities with populations below 50,000 during a period of extensive transformation in public financial management and local government.

Over the eight years following the regulation’s publication, the capacity of these municipalities to prepare budgets aligned with performance programmes improved. Local government revenues also increased by 50% in real terms. Given their stronger technical capacity and substantial resource use, municipalities below 50,000—and at least those above 10,000 at this stage—should prepare performance programmes to use public resources effectively within a programme framework. In 2017, 347 municipalities had populations between 10,000 and 50,000.

Because existing budgets are not structured around activities and projects, budgets prepared without performance programmes largely become accounting formats. Standard tables under the analytical budget classification do not generate information by programme or subprogramme (objectives and targets). This distances budget discussions from policies and priorities. For the budget process and accountability envisaged in the relevant legislation to function, all municipalities should prepare performance programmes and submit them to their councils. The Ministry of the Interior and the Ministry of Finance should issue guidance in this area.

Original supporting illustration (in Turkish).

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Assessment Notes