A Research on the Reflections of the E-Government Application on the State-Citizen Relations: The Case of Erzurum

There is a general view that the state apparatus is closed to interaction, vertical hierarchical and bureaucratic structure in Turkey. In such a structure where the state-citizen encounter creates a certain power asymmetry, the encounter of the governed with the state produces a serious perception regarding the enormous power of the bureaucracy. Because the dominant administrative image in citizen's mind is that the state has a strict bureaucratic structure. This situation is a problem in terms of the soundness of state-citizen relations. However, with the c-government application that became widespread in Turkey since the late 2010s years, this situation seems to have changed greatly. With the application in question, the hierarchical / vertical state model is gradually giving way to the participatory / horizontal state model. This study aims to examine the assumption that e-government services convert the state-citizen relations positively. Questionnaire technique, which is one of the quantitative research methods, was used in the study; and the present paper examined in which direction the perception of the state in the minds of the citizens was transformed depending on demographic characteristics. As a result, it was determined that the e-government application greatly increased the trust in the state, made the citizens feel important, prevented abuses such as irregularity, corruption and favoritism in formal occasions, and gave the citizen a feeling of participating in the administration.