PUBLIC, POWER AND THE POWER ELITE: MERSİN-TURKEY CASE STUDY
The major objective of this study is to examine and discuss the people’s general perception and classification of the power in Mersin. Secondly, the ideas of the people who are living in Mersin about the power structure and the distribution of power in contemporary Turkish society are explained. Finally, The Turkish power elite on public eye are examined. Mersin takes 17th place on the list of the social-economical development of the Turkish cities. It is Mediterranean city and has a rather high development potential on the tourism, trade, agriculture, agricultural industry and the service sectors. The findings of a rather compherensive field research which has been realised about 1420 household are used. Semi-structured interview techniques are used to collect the data needed. A data set is created from the data that were gathered from the field. A highly detailed questionnaire were used for the interviews: There were structured, semi structured and open-ended questions in the questionnaires. The computer program of the SPSS (Statistical Packages for Social Sciences) will be used for analysing the data set.

Keywords
Mersin, Public, Democracy, Power, Turkey, Elite, Power Structure, Power Elite, Turkish Power Elite.