Ministry of the Interior (Turkey)

Turkey is divided into 81 provinces (Turkish: il). Each province is divided into a number of districts (ilçe). Each provincial government is seated in the central district (merkez ilçe). For non-metropolitan municipality designated provinces, the central district bears the name of the province (e.g. the city/district of Rize is the central district of Rize Province). In the Ottoman Empire, the corresponding unit was the vilayet.

Each province is administered by an appointed governor (vali) from the Ministry of the Interior.

Turkey is a presidential republic with a multi-party system. Major parties are defined as political parties that received more than 7% of the votes in the latest general election and/or represented in parliament. Minor parties are defined as political parties that have fulfilled the requirements of the Supreme Election Council (Yüksek Seçim Kurulu in Turkish, abbreviated as YSK) and don't have any representatives in the parliament. Forming a political party without prior permission is a constitutional right, but the Interior Ministry may delay registering a new party for years, so the party cannot stand in elections.

If the ID and serial number of a person's Turkish identity card is known, anyone can query their political party membership via the website of the General Prosecution Office of the Supreme Court of Appeal or mobile phone messages.

Ali Yerlikaya (born 11 October 1968) is a Turkish bureaucrat serving as the minister of the interior since 4 June 2023. He previously served as the governor of Istanbul from 2018 to 2023. Following the annulment of the March 2019 Istanbul mayoral election, Yerlikaya was briefly the acting Mayor of Istanbul until a new successor was elected in a re-run in June 2019.

Prior to becoming Governor of Istanbul, Yerlikaya served as the governor of Şırnak from 2007 to 2010, as the governor of Ağrı from 2010 to 2012, as the governor of Tekirdağ from 2012 to 2015, and as the governor of Gaziantep from 2015 to 2018.

The Gendarmerie General Command (Turkish: Jandarma Genel Komutanlığı) is the national gendarmerie force of the Republic of Turkey. It is a service branch of the Turkish Ministry of Interior responsible for the maintenance of the public order in areas that fall outside the jurisdiction of police forces (generally in rural areas), as well as assuring internal security along with carrying out other specific duties assigned to it by certain laws and regulations. The Commander of the Gendarmerie reports to the Minister of the Interior.

The Gendarmerie has its roots in the Ottoman Empire military law enforcement organization "Subaşı" (later known as the "Zaptiye"). A similar, earlier force called "Şurta" existed during the medieval Seljuq Empire.