Migration patterns in Turkey between 1995 and 2000: Income, employment and distance effects on inter-provincial migration

After the 1950s, rural migration played an important role in the urbanization of Turkey. While at the beginning rural to urban migration was greater than urban to urban migration, later urban to urban migration passed rural to urban migration parallel with the changes in the rural-urban ratio of the population in the provinces. The amount of net migrants decreased after 1995 as the population and income increased at the national level. This study investigates migration patterns among the provinces of Turkey by the use of ordinary least squares (OLS) regression and geographically weighted regression (GWR) analyses between 1995 and 2000. Migration between provinces is taken as dependent variable, while industrial, service and agricultural employment, income and distances between provinces are taken as independent variables in the OLS and GWR analyses. The main result of both analyses is that migration is influenced positively to a substantial extent by industrial and service employment opportunities and negatively by the distance. The impact of distance is stronger for in-migrants than out-migrants with a few exceptions, which suggests that migratory moves are made in series of steps from close to distant locations which form a hierarchy. In addition, these findings are not stationary across the entire country. As these factors are the determinants of regional discrepancy, this study may guide government policies, public and private investments at the national level.