The 81 Provinces of Türkiye

Last reviewed on 27 September 2026.

Türkiye (Turkey) is a unitary state: there are no federal states or autonomous regions, and all public authority ultimately flows from the central government in Ankara. For administration, the country is divided into 81 provinces (il), each subdivided into districts (ilçe). Provinces are the units you meet constantly in daily life — on car number plates, postal addresses, weather forecasts, election results and disaster declarations — so knowing how they work makes a great deal of Turkish news and travel easier to follow.

Provinces and districts

Each province is named after, and administered from, its central city, with a small number of exceptions noted in the table below. Provinces vary enormously in size and population: İstanbul is home to a large share of the country's people, while several eastern and Black Sea provinces have fewer inhabitants than a single Istanbul district. Konya is the largest province by area.

Below the province are the districts, just under a thousand of them nationwide (973 at the time of writing). One district in each province is the central district (merkez ilçe), containing the provincial capital; in metropolitan provinces the city is instead split into several urban districts. Districts are further divided into neighbourhoods (mahalle) and, outside metropolitan provinces, villages (köy). Each neighbourhood and village elects a headman, the muhtar, who handles local certificates, residence registration and is often the first point of contact with the state.

Who runs a province

A Turkish province has two parallel structures: an appointed one representing the central state, and elected local government.

In provinces without a metropolitan municipality, a special provincial administration (il özel idaresi), with an elected provincial council, provides services to rural areas outside municipal boundaries. The relationship between elected mayors and appointed governors can be a political flashpoint: under Turkish law the Interior Ministry can remove mayors facing terrorism-related investigations and appoint trustees (kayyum), a power that has been used repeatedly, mostly in the southeast, and is criticised by opposition parties and human-rights groups. More on the national system is on the government and politics page.

Metropolitan municipalities

Thirty provinces have a metropolitan municipality (büyükşehir belediyesi). In these, a two-tier system applies: a metropolitan mayor elected by the whole province handles city-wide services such as transport, water and major roads, while district municipalities with their own mayors handle local services. Since a reform law of 2012, which took effect with the 2014 local elections, the boundaries of each metropolitan municipality have been the same as those of its province, and former villages became neighbourhoods. That is why, for example, the Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality covers forests and farmland far from the city centre.

The 30 metropolitan provinces are: Adana, Ankara, Antalya, Aydın, Balıkesir, Bursa, Denizli, Diyarbakır, Erzurum, Eskişehir, Gaziantep, Hatay, İstanbul, İzmir, Kahramanmaraş, Kayseri, Kocaeli, Konya, Malatya, Manisa, Mardin, Mersin, Muğla, Ordu, Sakarya, Samsun, Şanlıurfa, Tekirdağ, Trabzon and Van.

One practical consequence: in several metropolitan provinces there is no longer a single district named after the capital. Addresses in Mersin, for example, use urban districts such as Akdeniz, Yenişehir, Toroslar and Mezitli; in Gaziantep, Şahinbey and Şehitkamil; in Hatay, the Antakya and Defne districts. The table below gives the name by which the provincial capital is commonly known.

Licence plate codes

Every province has a two-digit code, used as the first element of vehicle registration plates (so an Ankara car starts "06", an Istanbul car "34"). The codes are also familiar from telephone-style shorthand, football chants and social media, and many Turks know them by heart.

The first 67 codes were assigned in alphabetical order of the province names as they stood at the time. That explains some apparent oddities: Mersin is 33 because the province was then called İçel; Kahramanmaraş is 46 because it was then Maraş; and Şanlıurfa is 63 because it was then Urfa — the honorific prefixes "Kahraman" (heroic) and "Şanlı" (glorious) were added later in recognition of their resistance during the War of Independence. Codes 68 to 81 belong to provinces created from 1989 onwards and follow their order of creation, from Aksaray (68) to Düzce (81), the newest province, created in 1999.

The seven geographic regions

The regions in the table are the seven geographic regions defined in 1941 — Marmara, Aegean, Mediterranean, Black Sea, Central Anatolia, Eastern Anatolia and Southeastern Anatolia. They are used in geography, statistics and everyday speech, but they are not administrative units and have no government of their own. A few provinces straddle regional boundaries; the table gives the region to which each province is conventionally assigned. Separately, for statistical and EU-comparable purposes, Türkiye also uses a set of NUTS-style statistical regions, which group provinces differently. For the landscape of each region, see the geography of Türkiye.

All 81 provinces

Listed in plate-code order. "Capital" is the provincial centre; where it matches the province name, the name is repeated. Population figures are deliberately omitted because they change every year — the Turkish Statistical Institute (TÜİK) publishes current figures based on the address-based population registration system.

Provinces by region

• Marmara (11): Balıkesir, Bilecik, Bursa, Çanakkale, Edirne, İstanbul, Kırklareli, Kocaeli, Sakarya, Tekirdağ, Yalova.
• Aegean (8): Afyonkarahisar, Aydın, Denizli, İzmir, Kütahya, Manisa, Muğla, Uşak.
• Mediterranean (8): Adana, Antalya, Burdur, Hatay, Isparta, Kahramanmaraş, Mersin, Osmaniye.
• Black Sea (18): Amasya, Artvin, Bartın, Bayburt, Bolu, Çorum, Düzce, Giresun, Gümüşhane, Karabük, Kastamonu, Ordu, Rize, Samsun, Sinop, Tokat, Trabzon, Zonguldak.
• Central Anatolia (13): Aksaray, Ankara, Çankırı, Eskişehir, Karaman, Kayseri, Kırıkkale, Kırşehir, Konya, Nevşehir, Niğde, Sivas, Yozgat.
• Eastern Anatolia (14): Ağrı, Ardahan, Bingöl, Bitlis, Elazığ, Erzincan, Erzurum, Hakkâri, Iğdır, Kars, Malatya, Muş, Tunceli, Van.
• Southeastern Anatolia (9): Adıyaman, Batman, Diyarbakır, Gaziantep, Kilis, Mardin, Siirt, Şanlıurfa, Şırnak.

Common mistakes

• Confusing famous places with provinces. Cappadocia, Ephesus, Bodrum, Pamukkale, Alanya and Fethiye are not provinces. Cappadocia spans several provinces (mainly Nevşehir, plus parts of Kayseri, Aksaray and Niğde); Ephesus is in İzmir province; Bodrum and Fethiye are districts of Muğla; Pamukkale is in Denizli; Alanya is a district of Antalya.
• Assuming the province and its capital share a name everywhere. Kocaeli (İzmit), Sakarya (Adapazarı) and Hatay (Antakya) do not, and older names such as İçel, Maraş and Urfa still appear.
• Treating regions as governments. "The Black Sea region" has no administration of its own; decisions are taken by provinces, municipalities and central ministries.
• Reading plates as proof of origin. Many cars, especially rentals and company vehicles, are registered far from where they are driven.

Frequently asked questions

Where this fits on the rest of the site

• The landscape behind the regional groupings: geography of Türkiye and the seven regions.
• How governors, mayors and ministries fit into the national system: government and politics.
• City guides for provincial capitals such as Ankara, İzmir, Konya and Trabzon are in the cities section.
• Plate codes matter on the road: see driving in Türkiye.
• The provinces declared disaster areas in 2023 are discussed on earthquakes in Türkiye.
• How the provincial map was drawn after the empire: the War of Independence.