Öz
Socio-economic differences between urban and rural areas are one of the important problems in Turkey. Population characteristics, natural resources, technologic developments, social and cultural structure must be considered during decision making processes and during any kind of policy making activities about rural areas for sustainable development. To achieve this goal, it is critical to determine socio-economic structure of the rural settlements. In this study, several socio-economic variables, which were obtained from TURKSTAT, were used to determine groups of provinces which represent similar rural characteristics by using hierarchical cluster analysis technique. The analyses were supported with dendrogram and agglomerative schedule. According to Ward method, Turkey has divided into eighteen groups in terms of rural socio-economic similarities. Initial results showed that neighboring provinces represent great similarity, but several other provinces, which are located at different geographical regions, also showed similar characteristics with each other. These findings represent contrast with the results of comparison of urban and rural characteristics together for Turkish provinces. Consequently, it can be said that the results of this study indicate that most of the rural areas are similar and differences are not significant in Turkey.