The Relation Between International Movements and Development: Analysis of Cities in Turkey

This study aims to analyse the extent to which international mobility impacts the socio-economic development of cities in Turkey. Firstly, a 27-variable principal component analysis was applied to determine the development index of the cities. The socio-economic development of the cities is classified into six categories. Primarily international mobility, international capital, and population mobility have been evaluated two-dimensionally within the accessible national data covering the years 2018-2019. In this study, the effect of the variables of international mobility on the cities' socio-economic development was identified through multivariate regression and geographic weighted regression (GWR) analysis. Global (OLS) and GWR analyses allow us to investigate the impact of and the relationship between international mobility on socio-economic development. GWR model, which can give place-based regression results and additionally the number of companies with foreign capital, the number of houses sold to foreigners, the number of incentive certificates issued to foreigners, the number of foreign workers, the number of foreigners granted residence permits, and the number of international students were used as independent variables. International capital mobility has a meaningful and positive relationship with the socio-economic development index. The variable of the number of international students used as a part of international population mobility does not have a meaningful effect on socio-economic development index (SEGE). Overall, international mobility has a positive impact on the level of socio-economic development of the cities. However, given the geographical distribution of international capital and population movements in Turkey, western and southern regions seem to have a higher mobility level than the rest of the country.