Demographics of Turkey
This article is about the demographic features of the population of Turkey, including population density, ethnicity, education level, health of the populace, economic status, religious affiliations and other aspects of the population. As of December 31, 2021, the population of Turkey was 84.7 million with a growth rate of 0.55% per annum. Turkish people are the largest ethnic group, followed by Kurds. The population is relatively young, with 22.4% falling in the 0–14 age bracket. According to OECD/World Bank population statistics, from 1990 to 2008 the population growth in Turkey was 16 million or 29%. Population . Life expectancy. Source: UN Vital statistics. UN estimates. The figures from the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs: Registered births and deaths. Birth statistics of Turkey from 2001 onward are from the Central Population Administrative System (MERNIS) database which is available on-line. Birth statistics are updated continually because MERNIS has dynamic structure. In 2010 Turkey had a crude birth rate of 17.2 per 1000, in 2011 16.7, down from 20.3 in 2001. The total fertility rate (TFR) in 2010 was 2.05 children per woman, in 2011 2.02. The crude birth rate in 2010 ranged from 11.5 per 1,000  in West Marmara (TFR 1.52) (11,5;1.55 in 2011), similar to neighbouring Bulgaria, to 27.9 per 1,000 in Southeast Anatolia (TFR 3.53) (27.1;3,42 in 2011), similar to neighbouring Syria. Similarly, in 2012, the TFR ranged from 1.43 in Kırklareli, to 4.39 in Şanlıurfa. Death statistics from MERNIS are available as of 2009. Mortality data prior to 2009 are incomplete. Historical fertility rate. Fertility Rate (TFR) (Wanted Fertility Rate) and CBR (Crude Birth Rate): Total fertility rate by region in Turkey by Turkish General Census (GNS) and Turkish population and health research (TNSA). Total fertility rate (TFR) by province and year. Figures  from Turkish Statistical Institute (TurkStat): Structure of the population. Structure of the population (2015): Structure of the population (2016): Structure of the population (2017): Structure of the population (2018): Structure of the population (2019): Immigration. Immigration to Turkey is the process by which people migrate to Turkey to reside in the country. After the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire and following Turkish War of Independence, an exodus by the large portion of Turkish (Turkic) and Muslim peoples from the Balkans (Balkan Turks, Albanians, Bosniaks, Pomaks), Caucasus (Abkhazians, Ajarians, Circassians, Chechens), Crimea (Crimean Tatar diaspora), and Crete (Cretan Turks) took refuge  in present-day Turkey and moulded the country's fundamental features. Trends of immigration towards Turkey continue to this day, although the motives are more varied and are usually in line with the patterns of global immigration movements — Turkey, for example, receives many economic migrants from nearby countries such as Armenia, the Moldova, Georgia, Iran, and Azerbaijan, but also from Central Asia, Ukraine and Russia. Turkey's migrant crisis during the 2010s saw high numbers of people arriving in Turkey, particularly those fleeing the Syrian civil war. Ethnic groups and languages. No exact data is available concerning the different ethnic  groups in Turkey. The last census data according to language date from 1965 and major changes may have occurred since then. However, it is clear that the Turkish are in the majority, while the largest minority groups are Kurds and Arabs. Smaller minorities are the Armenians, Greeks and others. All ethnic groups are discussed below. The word Turk or Turkish also has a wider meaning in a historical context because, at times, especially in the past, it has been used to refer to all Muslim inhabitants of the Ottoman Empire irrespective of their ethnicity. The question of ethnicity in modern  Turkey is a highly debated and difficult issue. Figures published in several different sources prove this difficulty by varying greatly. It is necessary to take into account all these difficulties and be cautious while evaluating the ethnic groups. A possible list of ethnic groups living in Turkey could be as follows: According to the 2016 edition of the CIA World Factbook, 70–75% of Turkey's population consists of ethnic Turks, with Kurds accounting for 19% and other minorities between 7 and 12%. According to Milliyet, a 2008 report prepared for the National Security Council of Turkey by academics of three  Turkish universities in eastern Anatolia suggested that there are approximately 55 million ethnic Turks, 9.6 million Kurds, 3 million Zazas, 2.5 million Circassians, 2 million Bosniaks, 500,000–1.3 million Albanians, 1,000,000 Georgians, 870,000 Arabs, 600,000 Pomaks, 80,000 Laz, 60,000 Armenians, 30,000 British, 25,000 Assyrians/Syriacs, 20,000 Jews, and 15,000 Greeks, 500 Yazidis living in Turkey. Since the immigration to the big cities in the west of Turkey, interethnic marriage has become more common. A recent study estimates that there are 2,708,000 marriages between Turks and Kurds. According to a survey done in March 2020 by Area Araştırma, 20.4% of the total  population of Turkey claim to be Kurdish (either Kurmanji speaking or Zazaki speaking). Ethnolinguistic estimates in 2014 by Ethnologue and Jacques Leclerc: Scale of Ethnologue: Turks. Although numerous modern genetic studies have indicated that the present-day Turkish population is primarily descended from historical native Anatolian groups, the first Turkic-"speaking" people lived in a region extending from Central Asia to Siberia and were palpable after the 6th century BC. Seventh-century Chinese sources preserve the origins of the Turks stating that they were a branch of the Hsiung-nu (Huns) and living near the "West Sea", perhaps the Caspian Sea . Modern sources tends to indicate that the Turks' linguistic and cultural ancestors lived within the state of the Hsiung-nu in the Transbaikal area and that they later, during the fifth century, migrated to the southern Altay. The word "Türk" was used only referring to Anatolian villagers back in the 19th century. The Ottoman elite identified themselves as Ottomans, not usually as Turks. In the late 19th century, as European ideas of nationalism were adopted by the Ottoman elite, and as it became clear that the Turkish-speakers of Anatolia were the most loyal supporters of Ottoman rule, the term  Türk took on a much more positive connotation. During Ottoman times, the millet system defined communities on a religious basis, and a residue of this remains in that Turkish villagers will commonly consider as Turks only those who profess the Sunni faith, and will consider Turkish-speaking Jews, Christians, or even Alevis to be non-Turks. On the other hand, Kurdish-speaking or Arabic-speaking Sunnis of eastern Anatolia are sometimes considered to be Turks. The imprecision of the appellation "Türk" can also be seen with other ethnic names, such as "Kürt" (Kurd), which is often applied by western Anatolians  to anyone east of Adana, even those who speak only Turkish. Thus, the category "Türk", like other ethnic categories popularly used in Turkey, does not have a uniform usage. In recent years, centrist Turkish politicians have attempted to redefine this category in a more multi-cultural way, emphasizing that a "Türk" is anyone who is a citizen of the Republic of Turkey. Currently, article 66 of the Turkish Constitution defines a ""Turk"" as anyone who is "bound to the Turkish state through the bond of citizenship". Those who identify themselves as Turks are the majority in Turkey, numbering 65 to  70 million. Kurds. The Kurdish identity remains the strongest minority in modern Turkey. This is perhaps due to the mountainous terrain of the southeast of the country, where they mostly predominate and represent a majority. They inhabit all major towns and cities across eastern Turkey. However, no accurate up-to-date figures are available for the Kurdish population, since the Turkish government has outlawed ethnic or racial censuses. An estimate by the CIA World Factbook places their proportion of the population at approximately 19%. Another estimate, according to Ibrahim Sirkeci, in his book "The Environment of Insecurity in Turkey and  the Emigration of Turkish Kurds to Germany", based on the 1990 Turkish Census and 1993 Turkish Demographic Health Survey, is 17.8%. Other estimates include 15.7% of the population according to the newspaper "Milliyet", and 23% by Kurdologist David McDowall. The Minority Rights Group report of 1985 (by Martin Short and Anthony McDermott) gave an estimate of 15% Kurds in the population of Turkey in 1980, i.e. 8,455,000 out of 44,500,000, with the preceding comment "Nothing, apart from the actual 'borders' of Kurdistan, generates as much heat in the Kurdish question as the estimate of the Kurdish population. Kurdish nationalists are  tempted to exaggerate it, and governments of the region to understate it. In Turkey only those Kurds who do not speak Turkish are officially counted for census purposes as Kurds, yielding a very low figure." In "Turkey: A Country Study", a 1995 online publication of the U.S. Library of Congress, there is a whole chapter about Kurds in Turkey where it is stated that "Turkey's censuses do not list Kurds as a separate ethnic group. Consequently, there are no reliable data on their total numbers. In 1995 estimates of the number of Kurds in Turkey is about 8.5 million  out of 61.2 million, or 13% of the population at that time. Kurdish national identity is far from being limited to the Kurmanji-language community, as many Kurds whose parents migrated towards Istanbul or other large non-Kurdish cities mostly speak Turkish, which is one of the languages used by the Kurdish nationalist publications. Arabs. The population of Arabs in Turkey varies according to different sources. Al Jazeera and the Washington Institute for Near East Policy estimates the Arab population before the Syrian Civil War in 2011 from 1,500,000 to more than 2,000,000, with recent Syrian refugees 2,748,367, so Arabs 	Demographics of Turkey
23116298	in Turkey constituency now numbers anywhere from 4.5 to 5.1% of the population. Put another way, with nearly 4–5 million Arab inhabitants. Zazas. Zazas, are a people in eastern Anatolia who natively speak the Zaza language. Their heartland, the Dersim region, consists of Tunceli, Bingöl provinces and parts of Elazığ, Erzincan and Diyarbakır provinces. The exact number of Zazas is unknown, due to the absence of recent and extensive census data. The most recent official statistics concerning native language are available for the year 1965, where 147,707 (0.5%) chose Zaza as their native language in Turkey. Georgians. There are approximately 	Demographics of Turkey
23116299	1 million people of Georgian ancestry in Turkey, according to the newspaper Milliyet". Roma people. The Roma in Turkey descend from the times of the Byzantine Empire. According to some reports, there are about 500,000–700,000 Roma in Turkey. The neighborhood of Sulukule, located in Western Istanbul, is the oldest Roma settlement in Europe. Iranians. Shireen Hunter noted in a 2010 publication that there were some 500,000 Iranians in Turkey. Laz. Most Laz today live in Turkey, but the Laz minority group has no official status in Turkey. Their number today is estimated to be around 250,000 and 500,000. Only a  minority are bilingual in Turkish and their native Laz language which belongs to the South Caucasian group. The number of the Laz speakers is decreasing and is now limited chiefly to the Rize and Artvin areas. The historical term Lazistan — formerly referring to a narrow tract of land along the Black Sea inhabited by the Laz as well as by several other ethnic groups — has been banned from official use and replaced with "Doğu Karadeniz" (which includes Trabzon). During the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–1878, the Muslim population of Russia near the war zones was subjected to ethnic cleansing; many  Lazes living in Batum fled to the Ottoman Empire, settling along the southern Black Sea coast to the east of Samsun. Azerbaijanis. It is difficult to determine how many ethnic Azeris currently reside in Turkey, as ethnicity is a rather fluid concept in Turkey, especially amongst Turkic-speaking and Caucasian groups who have been more readily and easily assimilated into mainstream Turkish culture. Up to 300,000 of Azeris who reside in Turkey are citizens of Azerbaijan. In the Eastern Anatolia Region, Azeris are sometimes referred to as "acem" (see Ajam) or "tat". They currently are the largest ethnic group in  the city of Iğdır and second largest ethnic group in Kars. Since linguistically the two are so similar, the safest way to count or estimate the number of Azeris from the Turks in Turkey is to note the fact that Azeris are practically all Shia Muslims while their Turkish and Kurdish neighbors are Sunni Muslims. Circassians. Towards the end of the Russo-Circassian War (1763–1864), many Circassians fled their homelands in the North Caucasus and settled in the Ottoman Empire. Most ethnic Circassians have fully assimilated into Turkish culture, making it difficult to trace, count, or even estimate their ethnic  presence. Armenians. Armenians in Turkey are indigenous to Anatolia & Armenian highlands well over 3000 years, an estimated population of 40,000 (1995) to 70,000. Most are concentrated around Istanbul. The Armenians support their own newspapers and schools. The majority belong to the Armenian Apostolic faith, with smaller numbers of Armenian Catholics and Armenian Evangelicals. Their original population during the dying days of the Ottoman Empire was counted to be 1.2–1.8 million. The majority of Armenians had lived in the Ottoman-controlled portion of the Armenian Highlands, the modern day Eastern Anatolia Region, until 1.5 million were killed and the rest deported  during the Armenian genocide between 1915 and 1923. Assyrians/Syriacs. An estimated 40,000–50,000 Assyrians/Syriacs live in Turkey, with about 17,000 in Istanbul and the other 23–33,000 scattered in southeast Turkey primarily in Turabdin, Diyarbakir, Adiyaman, and Harput respectively. They belong to the Syriac Orthodox Church, Syriac Catholic Church, and Chaldean Catholic Church. Some Mhallami, a Muslim ethnic group who usually are described as Arabs, have Assyrian/Syriac ancestry. They live in the area between Mardin and Midyat, called in Syriac "I Mhalmayto" (ܗܝ ܡܚܠܡܝܬܐ). Chechens. Towards the end of the Caucasian War (1817–1864), many Chechens fled their homelands in  the North Caucasus and settled in the Ottoman Empire. Chechens number from tens or hundreds of thousands. Greeks. The Greeks constitute a population of Greek and Greek-speaking Eastern Orthodox Christians who mostly live in Istanbul, including its district Princes' Islands, as well as on the two islands of the western entrance to the Dardanelles: Imbros and Tenedos ( and "Bozcaada"), and historically also in western Asia Minor (centred on Izmir/Smyrni), the Pontic Alps (centred on Trebzon and Sumelia, see Pontic Greeks), and central Anatolia (Cappadocia) and northeastern Anatolia and the South Caucasus region (Erzinjan, Erzerum, Kars, and Ardahan, see  Caucasus Greeks). The Istanbul Greeks are the remnants of the estimated 200,000 Greeks permitted under the provisions of the Treaty of Lausanne (1923) to remain in Turkey following the 1923 population exchange, which involved the forcible resettlement of approximately 1.5 million Greeks from Anatolia and East Thrace and of half a million Turks from all of Greece except for Western Thrace. After years of persecution (e.g. the Varlık Vergisi (1942–1944) and the Istanbul Pogrom of 1955), emigration of ethnic Greeks from the Istanbul region greatly accelerated, reducing the 120,000-strong Greek minority to about 7,000 by 1978. The 2008 figures  released by the Turkish Foreign Ministry places the current number of Turkish citizens of Greek descent at the 2,000–3,000 mark. According to Milliyet there are 15,000 Greeks in Turkey, while according to Human Rights Watch the Greek population in Turkey was estimated at 2,500 in 2006. Megleno-Romanians. Around 5,000 Megleno-Romanians live in Turkey. Religion. There are no official statistics of people's religious beliefs nor is it asked in the census. According to the government, 99.8% of the Turkish population is Muslim, mostly Sunni, some 8 million are Alevis. The remaining 0.2% is other - mostly Christians and Jews . However, these are based on the existing religion information written on every citizen's national id card, that is automatically passed on from the parents to every newborn, and do not necessarily represent individual choice. Religious records can be changed or even blanked on the request of citizen, by filing an e-government application since May 2020, using a valid electronic signature to sign the electronic application. Any change in religion records additionally results in a new ID card being issued. Any change in religion record also leaves a permanent trail in the census record, however, record of change  of religion is not accessible except for the citizen in question, next-of-kins of the citizen in question, the citizenship administration and courts. In a poll conducted by Sabancı University in 2006, 98.3% of Turks revealed they were Muslim. A Eurobarometer Poll in 2005 reported that in a poll 98% of Turkish citizens answered that "they believe there is a God", while 1% responded that "they do not believe there is any sort of spirit, God, or life force". In a Pew Research Center survey, 53% of Turkey's Muslims said that "religion is very important in their lives . Based on the Gallup Poll 2006–08, Turkey was defined as More religious", in which over 63 percent of people believe religion is important. According to the Turkish Economic and Social Studies Foundation, 62% of women wear the headscarf or hijab in Turkey. A poll conducted by Eurobarometer and KONDA and some other research institutes in 2013 showed that around 0.5% of the population had no religion. Another poll conducted by the same institutions in 2018 showed that 3% of those interviewed had no religion. According to Ipsos survey, in 2016 Islam was the major religion in Turkey comprising 82% of  the total population, followed by religiously unaffiliated people, comprising 13% of the population, and Christians, forming 0.2%. Religious groups according to estimates: The vast majority of the present-day Turkish people are Muslim and the most popular sect is the Hanafite school of Sunni Islam, which was officially espoused by the Ottoman Empire; according to the KONDA Research and Consultancy survey carried out throughout Turkey on 2007: In 2018 KONDA released a new study : Among those aged between 15 and 29 years old : Minorities. Modern Turkey was founded by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk as secular ("Laiklik", Turkish adaptation of French "Laïcité ), i.e. without a state religion, or separate ethnic divisions/ identities. The concept of minorities" has only been accepted by the Republic of Turkey as defined by the Treaty of Lausanne (1923) and thence strictly limited to Greeks, Jews and Armenians, only on religious matters, excluding from the scope of the concept the ethnic identities of these minorities as of others such as the Kurds who make up 15% of the country; others include Assyrians/Syriacs of various Christian denominations, Alevis and all the others. There are many reports from sources such as (Human Rights Watch, European Parliament, European Commission, national  parliaments in EU member states, Amnesty International etc.) on persistent yet declining discrimination. Certain current trends are: According to figures released by the Foreign Ministry in December 2008, there are 89,000 Turkish citizens designated as belonging to a minority, two thirds of Armenian descent. CIA World Factbook demographic statistics. The following demographic statistics are from the CIA World Factbook: Age structure "0–14 years:" 24.26% (male 10,085,558/female 9,627,967) "15–24 years:" 15.88% (male 6,589,039/female 6,311,113) "25–54 years:" 43.26% (male 17,798,864/female 17,349,228) 55–64 years: 8.82% (male 3,557,329/female 3,606,120) "65 years and over:" 7.79% (male 2,825,738/female 3,506,283) (2018 est .) Median age "total population:" 32.4 years "male:" 31.7 years "female:" 33.1 years (2019 est.) Sex ratio "at birth:" 1.05 male(s)/female "under 15 years:" 1.05 male(s)/female "15–24 years:" 1.04 male(s)/female "25–54 years:" 1.03 male(s)/female "55–64 years:" 0.99 male(s)/female "65 years and over:" 0.8 male(s)/female "total population:" 1.01 male(s)/female (2017 est.) Life expectancy at birth "total population:" 78.3 years "male:" 75.6 years "female:" 81.0 years (2019 est.) Urbanization urban population: 75.1% of total population (2018) rate of urbanization: 2.04% annual rate of change (2015–20 est.) Nationality "noun:" Turk(s) "adjective:" Turkish Literacy "definition:" age 15 and over can read and write total population : 96.2% male: 98.8% female: 93.6% (2016 est.)