Special provincial administrations, unlike other local government units, are not confined to a specific settlement area; rather, they encompass the entirety of the administrative geography referred to as a province. In this respect, they emerge as a distinctive administrative unit possessing the characteristics of an ‘area administration’. Responsible for delivering services that extend beyond municipal and village boundaries, special provincial administrations perform an intermediate-level function between the other two local government units in meeting local and collective needs. Inherited from the Ottoman administrative tradition and tracing their origins to the Vilayet Regulation of 1864, special provincial administrations possess a history spanning approximately 160 years. Nevertheless, although they acquired an unequivocal local government status with the Provisional Law of 1913, these administrations were unable to escape the shadow of the tutelary approach of the central government. The Law No. 5302, enacted in 2005, signaled a genuine step forward for these administrations by terminating the governor’s chairmanship of the provincial council and by enhancing their administrative and financial autonomy. However, the process initiated by Law No. 6360, adopted in 2012, profoundly affected both the existence of special provincial administrations and their position within the system of local government. Indeed, with the stated objectives of eliminating administrative fragmentation, ending the waste, bureaucratic obstacles, and political conflicts arising from the numerical proliferation of small-scale administrative units, and increasing effectiveness and efficiency by concentrating authority and responsibility in a single structure, this reform redefined the provincial administrative boundaries of thirty metropolitan municipalities as municipal boundaries, and the legal personality of special provincial administrations in these provinces was entirely abolished. The abolition of more than one-third of Türkiye’s special provincial administrations through a single legislative act dramatically reduced their share and influence within the local government system. The complete abolition of these administrations in metropolitan provinces, together with the shrinking financial resources of those that remain, constitutes clear evidence that the future awaiting special provincial administrations is far from promising.