Exploring Economic Development Through Headquarters: The Spatial Distribution of Turkey’s Large Industrial Enterprises and Its Implications for Urban Systems

This article examines the distribution of the headquarters of top 500 large industrial enterprises in Turkey. It contributes to the knowledge of economic geography by examining regional clusters of headquarters activity in Turkey. As a country, Turkey's corporations have not been extensively analyzed or integrated into the international economic geography literature especially given the fact that headquarters activities in general are important but understudied in the literature of geography. This study therefore extends the corporate literature further in an international dimension, a priority that has been noted as important in the headquarters literature of geography. It argues that not only does the spatial organization of corporations remain important in urban systems but also that they are linked to the dynamics of local and regional economies within developing countries. It shows that various Turkish cities have distinctive internal structures comprising agglomerations of different industries. Although some of these industries are better performing in big cities, the majority of the cities in the top 500 large enterprises list underperform on average.