This article is based on a longitudinal exploratory study of the Turkish local e-governments between September 2005 and December 2006. 3,228 Turkish local governments constitute the sampling framework of this paper.

 

The first part of the study, which took place in 2005, indicated that only 969 authorities were online. But the second part, issued at the end of 2006, showed that 1,591 units were online. The purpose of the second study was to explore the degree of change and how this change occurs in a certain time line among those authorities. Despite some theoretical studies in this field, no research was held on local e-governments, particularly, in a longitudinal dimension in Turkey.

The aim of this paper is to give a recent portrait and progress of the Turkish local e-governments in terms of certain “e-“ - topics on a longitudinal scale. Those are:

 

 

The paper is divided into two parts. The first part comprises a literature review of local e-government in the country. And the second part, through a two folded perspective, incorporates the findings in general. The methodology for gathering information is based on web scanning (websites of the authorities, governmental online repositories) and interviews with the key personnel in the local governments. The interviews took place mostly as online chats except three from Istanbul jurisdiction.