PUBLIC PARTICIPATION AND VOLUNTEER IN THE CITY COUNCIL: ADANA CITY COUNCIL SAMPLES

Abstract

Participation, which is one of the basic blocks of building of modern democracies, is understood and interpreted differently in every country and system. Participation in Turkey is perceived by humans as a viewpoint limited to expressing thoughts in an advisory manner only. Because the people hesitate to participate in decision-making mechanisms, not only in general but also in the local where they feel they can reach from the management side. Indeed, there are hesitations about the functions of the city councils, which are presented as one of the new means of participation in the locality, and the city councils are seen as a means of recommendation from the decision-making authority. This reduces the participation rates and causes the desired intensity of participation to fail. In this context, the Adana City Council is one of the first Turkey's city councils. The first thing that attracted attention in terms of participation and volunteering in the Adana City Council, which started its activities in 2001, has been the lack of representation in disadvantaged positions that all segments of society can not be represented equally but, women and young people in disadvantaged positions did not experience the problem of representation.. In this context, the purpose of the research; To form a general framework by putting public participation and volunteering in the city councils in the context of Adana and to propose solutions for community members who are unable to represent them. In this study, the importance of public participation and volunteering was explained and evaluated in the context of Adana City Council after being framed. Domestic and foreign literature was utilized while the theoretical framework of the study was established; In Adana City Council, case study was used while public participation and volunteerism were examined.