Determination of rural population in provinces that metropolitan status: The case of Ordu Province

With Law No 6360, the municipalities of provinces that had a population that exceeded 750.000 were converted into metropolitan municipalities in our country. Again, with the same law, village municipalities and village legal entities were abolished in the provinces that had the same population size, and such areas were defined as neighborhoods; and the metropolitan municipality boundaries were overlaid with provincial borders. Turkey Statistical Institute (TURKSTAT) considers the entire population within the metropolitan boundaries as the population of the “urban” by recognizing the above-mentioned law. As a result of this, the quantity and quality of the “rural” population is shared with the public in a way that is not proper to the geographical terminology. In the present study, the rural population of Ordu province, which was “ignored”, was determined by using the data of the Turkey Statistical Institute at neighborhood level. For this purpose, the “village” and “village municipalities (rural setlements)” before 2013 were separated from the neighborhoods that made up the “city” settlements. According to this classification, the amount and rate of the rural population of Ordu was determined according to the 2017 Address Based Population Registration System data. Different from similar studies, the gender structure, distribution of age groups, and educational status of the rural population were also included in the present study