A RESEARCH ON SOCIOECONOMIC INDICATORS FOR BETTER UNDERSTANDING THE MOTIVATORS OF THE FELLOW COUNTRYMEN ASSOCIATIONS IN BURSA

Turkey has been experiencing a rapid urbanization process since the 1950s. In the 1950s, 75% of the population lived in the city and district centers and this rate has reached 92%. Regional disparities in provided public services in urban and rural areas across the country promoted domestic migration from agricultural to industrial cities with better living conditions. As a result of the increase in received migration, the urban population exploded and the immigrant population had problems in adaptation to the urban lifestyle due to the precipitous differences in the socio-economic structure of the urban and rural. The exclusion of the immigrant population by the urbanites in many ways, in other words, their inability to integrate with the urban population caused them to seek solidarity among themselves and they established organizations. This organization, which is still active today, is "fellow countrymen associations", which are nongovernmental organizations. In this study, the distribution of citizen associations operating in the province of Bursa by districts and the tendency of those from which provinces to establish associations in which districts and their relation with the socio-economic development of the districts were revealed. For this purpose, the development of Fellow Countrymen Associations as a civil society organization was firstly examined in Turkey. Secondly, the distribution of nongovernmental organizations in Bursa province according to their fields of activity in the districts was determined and an answer was introduced for exploring the diversity of their activity fields based on the socio-economic development indicators. Finally, the distribution of the fellow countrymen associations has been examined in Bursa specifically and the relations with the development of the districts are tried to be revealed by the use of geo-information technologies. The main findings of the study presented the relationship between the total number of immigrants received from the same origin and the total number of the established association. It is seen that people from Eastern and Black Sea regions such as Erzurum, Mus, Samsun, Artvin, and Ardahan mostly reside outside of Bursa province. A striking result is that in the central districts of Bursa, the population that migrated from the surrounding districts or villages has also established fellow citizens’ associations. It has been observed that these associations are concentrated in the district of Osmangazi. On the other hand, it is observed that the associations in the Yildirim district have been established by people from the Eastern and Black Sea districts, while the number of associations in the Nilufer district is less and has a more homogeneous distribution.