Paper Title
Internal vs. External accessibility: International Trade And Findings On Causes Of Regional Disparities In Turkey

Abstract
Studies on economic development differences among regions argue that there is a positive relation between the development of a region and its connectivity and accessibility. Both are defined as forces that may trigger the development of the region they are related to. Nevertheless, they are not inter-correlated, as accessibility is more a sign of infrastructure which relations may be built on, connectivity is the network of the economic relations which relations are already established. The aim of this paper is to analyze whether there is a difference among domestic and international accessibilities and see their impact on regional economic disparities. Within this study, looking to the regional differences in Turkey we see that high domestic accessibility of a region does not necessarily result in high economic development. On the other hand, the international accessibility level is influential on the development level. To analyze the role of accessibility and external relations (import and export with other countries) on the development level of regions in Turkey we built a regression model. For this, first, an indicator that will represent the economic development level of the provinces has been worked out that takes the place of GDP, which has not been published at provincial level for over ten years in Turkey. In the model, employment, taxation, banking data have been used. Next, using this regional development indicator as the dependent variable, the regression model has been worked giving outcomes that show that the difference between the accessibility and connectivity is due to the fact that without external links (trade with other countries) the regions do not benefit from accessibility as it has been assumed. Hence, our findings show that at the case of Turkey, instead of increasing internal accessibility, improving external accessibility (trade) may work better at coping with regional disparities. Keywords - Accessibility, Connectivity, International Trade, Regional Development, Regional Disparities.