Regional Policies towards Air Transportation in Regional Development Plans of 26 Turkish NUTS II Regions

Turkey’s interest in planned regional development is new. Turkey adopted European Union’s regional policies in 2002 (statistical territorial units; NUTS). Then the country was categorised into 12 NUTS I, 26 NUTS II and 81 NUTS III (provinces) based on some statistical, socioeconomic and geographical data. In 2006, two pilot Regional Development Agencies (RDAs) were founded in the country. After that, in 2008 officially then 2010 actively, other 24 RDAs were also founded and started to work. As soon as they started their actions, among their first works are regional development plans (RDP), which tried to determine socioeconomic development potentials of the regions and policies to activate them with the collaboration of local actors, e.g. private sector representatives, public institutions and NGOs. So far, the RDAs in Turkey have prepared two RDPs, one for 2011 – 2013 term and the other for 2014 – 2023. RDPs include all types of socioeconomic development strategies together with a pre-determined vision by locals through several different ways and methods. This study tries to determine the views of RDPs belonging to different NUTS II Regions of Turkey about the development of air transportation and aviation activities by considering their visions, objectives, targets and strategies