The Nomenclature of Territorial Units for Statistics (NUTS) is a statistical classification method developed by the Statistical Office of the European Communities (Eurostat) starting in the 1970s—and incorporated into EU legislation from 1988 onwards—to ensure that regional statistics within the European Union are produced according to a unified spatial classification.

In Turkey, the use of NUTS began within the scope of the "National Programme for the Adoption of the EU Acquis," adopted by the Council of Ministers' Decision dated March 19, 2001, and the "Accession Partnership Document," prepared by the European Commission and adopted by the Environment Council on March 8, 2001. In this context, work initiated in 2001 under the coordination of the Undersecretariat of the State Planning Organization (SPO) and the Turkish Statistical Institute (TurkStat) defined the statistical territorial units for Turkey, and this classification entered into force with the Council of Ministers' Decision dated August 28, 2002.

With this decision, NUTS began to serve as the operational framework for regional statistics and for the implementation of regional development policies—particularly those involving Development Agencies—at national and regional levels, as well as within the EU harmonization process. Under this classification, provinces were designated as Level 3 units, while the grouping of neighboring provinces resulted in the creation of the 26 Level 2 and 12 Level 1 regions listed below. Given that NUTS II regions serve as an appropriate regional scale for national and regional analyses, form the basis for work conducted during the EU accession process, and are the level at which regions eligible for structural funds—under the EU cohesion policy's convergence objective—are determined, the NUTS II regions listed below have been designated as the primary units for development planning within the context of the country's regional policies. Level 1 Code