The projection of state power to provinces has been one of the core of the Ottoman and later Turkish modernization. The appointment of governors to remote corners has not only signified the ever growing presence of the state but enabled Imperial and Republican rulers to offer political representation in the power structure. What geographical and ethnic patterns characterize this representation? How do changes in ruling ideology and elites shape the nature and length of these assignment patterns? To address these questions in a systematic way, this paper presents an original dataset of the centrally appointed governors of the Ottoman Empire and the Turkish Republic from Abdülhamid’s coming to the throne in 1876 to the election of Erdo?an as President of Turkey in 2014. Using a wealth of primary and secondary sources, the dataset focuses on biographical information on the Ottoman and Turkish governors and their tenures. It includes information about their names, birth and death years, birth places, ancestry, family, tribal, or religious affiliation, ethnic origins, education, languages they speak, each of their assignments, and religious affiliation. An analysis of the dataset reveals interesting patterns regarding how different societal groups have been represented in the administrative power structure. For instance, certain periods have over or underrepresentation of certain ethnic and geographical groups, such as the overrepresentation of Albanians during the reign of Sultan Abdülhamid II, the significant underrepresentation of ethnic Kurds during the Turkish Republic, and the increasing number of governors from few provinces in the post-1980 and under the AKP years. Furthermore, tenure lengths are subject to significant changes across periods, provinces and types of regimes. Under rulers who have secured their holds on power (such as Sultan Abdulhamid II between 1890-1905), the tenures of the governors are longer compared to rulers who have less solid hold on power, or under more competitive regimes where government turnover is more frequent. Overall, this study provides the first comprehensive understanding of the persistent and changing patterns of provincial power from the late Ottoman era to the contemporary era.