Abstract
In the dictionary, the governor means “someone who is very close to something; the person in charge, the administrator." In this aspect, the governor has been one of the most basic figures of the public bureaucracy in the Turkish state tradition, as the head of the administration, in the states and cities for centuries. This structure, which the people identified with the State, played an important role in the institutionalization of the centralist understanding of the state, undergoing a significant change in the last period of the Ottoman State. In the provincial bureaucracy, which has been restructured from time to time starting with the Tanzimat period and progressing, governors are the absolute representative of the central government, but; his political, military and economic powers are quite limited. With the establishment of the Republic of Turkey, the absolute decentralized structure in the provincial administration was further increased, and the governors became the most important representatives of the new regime in the province, and therefore one of the most important representatives of the targeted transformation.
In this article, the developments in the periods of Hasan Faiz Bey, Ahmet Cevdet Bey, Mehmet Fevzi Bey, Ahmet Azmi Bey, Hasan Tahsin Bey, Ali Kamali Bey, Ahmet Mukhtar Bey and Mehmet Fahri Bey, who were governors of Erzincan starting with the proclamation of the Republic until 1939, were emphasized.