The diversity of rural areas in human, social, economic and ecological values is important for the sustainability of the settlement ecosystem. There is a consensus that the multi-component structure of rural areas cannot be determined by one-dimensional criteria such as population density, agriculture or natural resources and that the past/present policies are insufficient. After the discussion on the limitations of the definitions on the concepts of urban and rural and univariate classifications in the literature, a new approach on the classification of rural areas in Turkey was proposed. The nation’s contextual realities and the current data infrastructure were decisive in the variable and methodology selection. The present study aimed to classify the provincial rural areas in Turkey based on selected socio-demographic, economic and physical environment variables. The study was conducted on NUTS-3 level and the dataset was obtained from Turkey Statistical Institute and CORINE land cover data and K-means clustering, a non-hierarchical clustering method, was used. As a result of the spatial evaluations carried out at the provincial-subregional-regional level in the study, which are discussed under three main headings, it is seen that the sharpness of definition between the east and the west felt in the country has been broken over time.