Turkey is divided into 81 provinces (). Each province is divided into a number of districts (). Each provincial government is seated in the central district (). 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 () from the Ministry of the Interior.
After the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and the official establishment of the Republic of Turkey on 29 October 1923, changes were made to the administrative system. Two years later, Ardahan, BeyoÃÂlu, ÃÂatalca, Dersim, Ergani, Gelibolu, , Kozan, Oltu, Muà Â, Siverek and ÃÂsküdar provinces were transformed into districts. In 1927, DoÃÂubayazñt was transformed into a district and was made a part of AÃÂrñ. In 1929, Muà  became a province again and Bitlis became a district. Four years later, Aksaray, Cebelibereket, Hakkâri and à Âebinkarahisar became districts, Mersin and Silifke were merged to form a new province called ðçel, and Artvin and Rize were merged to form a new province called , bringing the number down to fifty-six. In 1936, Rize, Dersim and Hakkâri became provinces again, in the same year Dersim was renamed Tunceli; 3 years later in 1939, Hatay was annexed to Turkey and became a province. In 1953, it was decided that Uà Âak would become a province and that Kñrà Âehir would be transformed into a district, one year later in 1954 Adñyaman, Nevà Âehir and Sakarya gained province status. In 1956, the name of ÃÂoruh province was changed to Artvin, and in 1957 Kñrà Âehir's province status was restored. After this year, there were no changes in the number of provinces for the next 32 years until Aksaray, Bayburt, Karaman and Kñrñkkale became provinces in 1989 along with Batman and à Âñrnak in 1990; Bartñn in 1991; Ardahan and IÃÂdñr in 1992; Yalova, Karabük and Kilis in 1995; Osmaniye in 1996, and Düzce in 1999.
Below is a list of the 81 provinces of Turkey, sorted according to their license plate codes. Initially, the order of the codes matched the alphabetical order of the province names. After Zonguldak (code 67), the ordering is not alphabetical, but in the order of the creation of provinces, as these provinces were created more recently and thus their plate numbers were assigned after the initial set of codes had been assigned.
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The province's ISO code suffix number, the first two digits of the vehicle registration plates of Turkey, and the first digits of the postal codes in Turkey are the same. The Nomenclature of Territorial Units for Statistics (NUTS) codes are different.