Minorities in Turkey form a substantial part of the country's population, representing an estimated 25 to 28 percent of the population.[2] Historically, in the Ottoman Empire, Islam was the official and dominant religion, with Muslims having more rights than non-Muslims, whose rights were restricted.[3] Non-Muslim (dhimmi) ethno-religious[4] groups were legally identified by different millet ("nations").[3]
The 1923 Treaty of Lausanne specified Armenians, Greeks and Jews and Christians in general as ethnic minorities (dhimmi). This legal status was not granted to Muslim minorities, such as the Kurds, which constituted the largest minority by a wide margin, nor any of the other minorities in the country. In modern Turkey, data on the ethnic makeup of the country is not officially collected, although various estimates exist. All Muslim citizens are still regarded as Turks by law, regardless of their ethnicity or language, in contrast to non-Muslim minorities, who are still grouped as "non-Turks"; the largest ethnic minority, the Kurds, who are predominantly Muslim, are therefore still classified as simply "Turks".[4][5][6][7][8][9]Bulgarians are also an officially recognized minority by the Turkey-Bulgaria Friendship Treaty (Türkiye ve Bulgaristan Arasındaki Dostluk Antlaşması) of 18 October 1925 but there are no more Bulgarians in Turkey.[8][10][11] On 18 June 2013, the Ankara 13th Circuit Administrative Court unanimously ruled that the Assyrians were included as beneficiaries of the Lausanne Treaty,[12][a] so that Assyrians were allowed to open the first school teaching in their mother tongue.[13][14]
Afghans are one of the largest irregular migrant groups in Turkey. From the period 2003–2007, the number of Afghans apprehended were significant, with statistics almost doubling during the last year. Most had fled the War in Afghanistan. In 2005, refugees from Afghanistan numbered 300 and made a sizeable proportion of Turkey's registered migrants.[22] Most of them were spread out over satellite cities with Van and Ağrı being the most specific locations.[23] In the following years, the number of Afghans entering Turkey greatly increased, second only to migrants from Iraq; in 2009, there were 16,000 people designated under the Iraq-Afghanistan category. Despite a dramatic 50 percent reduction by 2010, reports confirmed hundreds living and working in Turkey.[24] As of January 2010, Afghans consisted one-sixth of the 26,000 remaining refugees and asylum seekers.[25] By the end 2011, their numbers are expected to surge up to 10,000, making them the largest population and surpass other groups.
A 2008 report from the Turkish National Security Council (MGK) estimated that approximately 1.3 million people of Albanian ancestry live in Turkey, and more than 500,000 recognizing their ancestry, language and culture. There are other estimates, however, that place the number of people in Turkey with Albanian ancestry and or background upward to 5 million.[31]
However, these assumptions of the Turkish government are contested by many scholars who claim they are without any basis.[32][need quotation to verify]
Arabs in Turkey number around 2 million, and they mostly live in provinces near the Syrian border, particularly the Hatay region, where they made up two fifths of the population in 1936.[33]
Turkey experienced a large influx of Iraqis between the years of 1988 and 1991 due to both the Iran–Iraq War and the first Gulf War,[34] with around 50,000 to 460,000 Iraqis entering the country.[35]
Syrians in Turkey include migrants from Syria to Turkey, as well as their descendants. The number of Syrians in Turkey is estimated at over 3.58 million people as of April 2018,[36] and consists mainly of refugees of the Syrian Civil War.
Armenians are indigenous to the Armenian Highlands which correspond to the eastern half of modern-day Turkey, the Republic of Armenia, southern Georgia, western Azerbaijan, and northwestern Iran. Although the word Armenia was banned from being used in the press, schoolbooks, and governmental establishments in Turkey in 1880 and although it was subsequently replaced with words like eastern Anatolia or northern Kurdistan, Armenians had maintained much of their cultural heritage.[37][38][39][40][41] The Armenian population of Turkey was greatly reduced following the Hamidian massacres and the Armenian genocide, when over one and a half million Armenians, virtually the entire Armenian population of Anatolia, were massacred. Prior to the start of the Genocide in 1915, the Armenian population of Turkey numbered about 1,914,620.[42][43] The Armenian community of the Ottoman Empire before the Armenian genocide had an estimated 2,300 churches and 700 schools (with 82,000 students).[44] This figure excludes churches and schools which belonged to the Protestant and Catholic Armenian parishes because the only churches and schools which were counted were the churches and schools which were under the jurisdiction of the Istanbul Armenian Patriarchate and the Apostolic Church.[44] After the Armenian genocide however, it is estimated that 200,000 Armenians remained in Turkey.[45] Today there are an estimated 40,000 to 70,000 Armenians in Turkey, not including the Hamshenis.[46][47]
There are as many as 12,000 Australians in Turkey.[52] Of these, the overwhelming majority are in the capital Ankara (roughly 10,000) while the remaining are in Istanbul. Australian expatriates in Turkey form one of the largest overseas Australian groups in Europe and Asia. The vast majority of Australian nationals in Turkey are Turkish Australians.
It is hard to determine how many ethnic Azeris currently reside in Turkey because ethnicity is a rather fluid concept in this country.[53] Up to 300,000 of Azeris who reside in Turkey are citizens of Azerbaijan.[54] In the Eastern Anatolia Region, Azeris are sometimes referred to as acem (see Ajam) or tat.[55] They currently are the largest ethnic group in the city of Iğdır[56] and second largest ethnic group in Kars.[57]
Today, the existence of Bosniaks in the country is evident everywhere. In cities like Istanbul, Eskişehir, Ankara, İzmir, or Adana, one can easily find districts, streets, shops or restaurants with names such as Bosna, Yenibosna, Mostar, or Novi Pazar.[58] However, it is extremely difficult to estimate how many Bosniaks live in this country. Some Bosnian researchers believe that the number of Bosniaks in Turkey is about two million.[59]
There are at least 34,000 Britons in Turkey.[60] They consist mainly of British citizens married to Turkish spouses, British Turks who have moved back into the country, students and families of long-term expatriates employed predominately in white-collar industry.[61]
People identifying as Bulgarian include a large number of the Pomak and a small number of Orthodox Bulgarians.[62][63][64][65][66] According to Ethnologue at present 300,000 Pomaks in European Turkey speak Bulgarian as their mother tongue.[67] It is very hard to estimate the number of Pomaks along with the Turkified Pomaks who live in Turkey, as they have blended into the Turkish society and have been often linguistically and culturally dissimilated.[68] According to Milliyet and Turkish Daily News reports, the number of Pomaks along with the Turkified Pomaks in the country is about 600,000.[69][68] According to the Bulgarian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Bulgarian Orthodox Christian community in Turkey stands at 500 members.[70]
Central Asian peoples
Turkey received refugees from among the Pakistan-based Kazakhs, Turkmen, Kirghiz, and Uzbeks numbering 3,800 originally from Afghanistan during the Soviet–Afghan War.[71] Kayseri, Van, Amasra, Cicekdag, Gaziantep, Tokat, Urfa, and Serinvol received via Adana the Pakistan-based Kazakh, Turkmen, Kirghiz, and Uzbek refugees numbering 3,800 with UNHCR assistance.[72]
Kazakhs
There are about 30,000 Kazakh people living in Zeytinburnu-Istanbul. It is known that there are Kazakh people in other parts of Turkey, for instance Manisa, Konya. In 1969 and 1954 Kazakhs migrated into Anatolia's Salihli, Develi and Altay regions.[73] Turkey became home to refugee Kazakhs.[74] The Kazakh Turks Foundation (Kazak Türkleri Vakfı) is an organization of Kazakhs in Turkey.[75] Kazakhs in Turkey came via Pakistan and Afghanistan.[76]Kazak Kültür Derneği (Kazakh Culture Associration) is a Kazakh diaspora organization in Turkey.[77]
Kyrgyz
Turkey's Lake Van area is the home of Kyrgyz refugees from Afghanistan.[78] Turkey became a destination for Kyrgyz refugees due to the Soviet–Afghan War from Afghanistan's Wakhan area[79] 500 remained and did not go to Turkey with the others.[80]Friendship and Culture Society of Kyrgyzstan (Кыргызстан Достук жана Маданият Коому) (Kırgızistan Kültür ve Dostluk Derneği Resmi Sitesi) is a Kyrgyz diaspora organization in Turkey.[81]
They were airlifted in 1982 from Pakistan where they had sought refugee after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan at the end of 1979. Their original home was at the eastern end of the Wakhan Corridor, in the Pamirs, bordering on China. It is not known how many Kyrgyz still live in Van and how many have moved on to other parts of Turkey.
Turkey is home to 45,000 Uzbeks.[83] In the 1800s Konya's north Bogrudelik was settled by Tatar Bukharlyks. In 1981 Afghan Turkestan refugees in Pakistan moved to Turkey to join the existing Kayseri, Izmir, Ankara, and Zeytinburnu based communities.[73] Turkish based Uzbeks have established links to Saudi-based Uzbeks.[84]
Turkey is home to 50,000 Uyghurs.[85] A community of Uyghurs live in Turkey.[86][87]Kayseri received Uyghurs numbering close to 360 via the UNHCR in 1966–1967 from Pakistan.[88] The Turkey-based Uyghur diaspora had a number of family members among Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, India, and Pakistan based Uyghurs who stayed behind while the UNHCR and government of Turkey had Kayseri receive 75 Uyghurs in 1967 and 230 Uyghurs in 1965 and a number in 1964 under Alptekin and Bughra.[89]We never call each other Uyghur, but only refer to ourselves as East Turkestanis, or Kashgarlik, Turpanli, or even Turks.- according to some Uyghurs born in Turkey.[90][91]
A community of Uyghurs live in Istanbul.[citation needed] Tuzla and Zeytinburnu mosques are used by the Uyghurs in Istanbul.[92][93] Piety is a characteristic of among Turkey dwelling Uyghurs.[94][95]
Istanbul's districts of Küçükçekmece, Sefaköy and Zeytinburnu are home to Uyghur communities.[96] Eastern Turkistan Education and Solidarity Association is located in Turkey.[97] Abdurahmon Abdulahad of the East Turkistan Education Association supported Uzbek Islamists who protested against Russia and Islam Karimov's Uzbekistan government.[98] Uyghurs are employed in Küçükçekmece and Zeytinburnu restaurants.[99][100]East Turkistan Immigration Association,[101]East Turkistan Culture and Solidarity Association,[102] and Eastern Turkistan Education and Solidarity Association are Uyghur diaspora organizations in Turkey.[103]
According to Milliyet, there are approximately 2.5 million Circassians in Turkey.[69] According to the EU reports there are three to five million Circassians in Turkey.[104] The closely related ethnic groups Abazins (10,000[105]) and Abkhazians (39,000[106]) are also often counted among them. Circassians are a Caucasian immigrant people, and although the Circassians in Turkey were forced to forget their language and assimilate into Turkish, a small minority still speak their native Circassian languages as it is still spoken in many Circassian villages, and the group that preserved their language the best are the Kabardians.[107] With the rise of Circassian nationalism in the 21st century, Circassians in Turkey, especially the young, have started to study and learn their language. The Circassians in Turkey are mostly SunniMuslims of Hanafimadh'hab.[108] The largest association of Circassians in Turkey,[109]KAFFED, is the founding member of the International Circassian Association (ICA).[110]
Before the 20th century, Crimean Tatars had immigrated from Crimea to Turkey in three waves: First, after the Russian annexation of Crimea in 1783; second, after the Crimean War of 1853–56; third, after the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–78.[111] The official number[citation needed] of Crimean Tatars is 150,000 (in the center of Eskişehir) but the real population (in the whole of Turkey) may be a few million. They mostly live in Eskişehir Province[112] and Kazan-Ankara.
Dagestani peoples
Various ethnic groups from Dagestan are present in Turkey. Dagestani peoples live in villages in the provinces like Balıkesir, Tokat and also scattered in other parts of the country. A majority among them are Nogais; Lezgins and Avars are other significant ethnic groups. Kumyks are also present.[citation needed]
There were 5,500 Filipinos in Turkey as of 2008, according to estimates by the Commission on Filipinos Overseas and the Philippine embassy in Ankara.[114] Out of those, most are recorded as maids and "overseas workers" employed in households of diplomatic communities and elite Turkish families.[115] Moreover, ten percent or approximately 500 Filipinos in Turkey are skilled workers and professionals working as engineers, architects, doctors and teachers.[115] Most of the Filipinos reside in Istanbul, Ankara, Izmir, Antalya and nearby surrounding areas.[114]
There are approximately 1 million people of Georgian ancestry in Turkey according to the newspaper Milliyet.[69] Georgians in Turkey are mostly Sunni Muslims of Hanafimadh'hab. Immigrant Georgians are called "Chveneburi", but autochthonous Muslim Georgians use this term as well. Muslim Georgians form the majority in parts of Artvin Province east of the Çoruh River. Immigrant Muslim groups of Georgian origin, found scattered in Turkey, are known as Chveneburi. The smallest Georgian group are Catholics living in Istanbul.
There are over 50,000 Germans living in Turkey, primarily Germans married to Turkish spouses, employees, retirees and long-term tourists who buy properties across the Turkish coastline, often spending most of the year in the country.[116] In addition, many Turkish Germans have also returned and settled.
The Greeks constitute a population of Greek and Greek-speaking Eastern OrthodoxChristians 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 (Turkish: Gökçeada and Bozcaada). Some Greek-speaking Byzantine Christians have been assimilated over the course of the last one thousand years.
They are the remnants of the estimated 200,000 Greeks who were permitted under the provisions of the Treaty of Lausanne to remain in Turkey following the 1923 population exchange,[117] 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 and the Istanbul Pogrom), emigration of ethnic Greeks from the Istanbul region greatly accelerated, reducing the 119,822 [118] -strong Greek minority before the attack to about 7,000 by 1978.[119] The 2008 figures released by the Turkish Foreign Ministry places the current number of Turkish citizens of Greek descent at the 3,000–4,000 mark.[120] According to Milliyet there are 15,000 Greeks in Turkey,[69] while according to Human Rights Watch the Greek population in Turkey was estimated at 2,500 in 2006.[121] According to the same source, the Greek population in Turkey was collapsing as the community was by then far too small to sustain itself demographically, due to emigration, much higher death rates than birth rates and continuing discrimination.[121] In recent years however, most notably since the economic crisis in Greece, the trend has reversed. A few hundred to over a thousand Greeks now migrate to Turkey yearly for employment or educational purposes.[122][123] Christian Greeks were forced to migrate as per the 1923 population exchange agreement. Muslim Greeks live in Turkey today. They live in cities of Trabzon and Rize. Pontic Greeks have Greek ancestry and speak the Pontic Greek dialect, a distinct form of the standard Greek language which, due to the remoteness of Pontus, has undergone linguistic evolution distinct from that of the rest of the Greek world. The Pontic Greeks had a continuous presence in the region of Pontus (modern-day northeastern Turkey), Georgia, and Eastern Anatolia from at least 700 BC until 1922.
Since 1924, the status of the Greek minority in Turkey has been ambiguous. Beginning in the 1930s, the government instituted repressive policies forcing many Greeks to emigrate. Examples are the labour battalions drafted among non-Muslims during World War II as well as the Fortune Tax levied mostly on non-Muslims during the same period. These resulted in financial ruination and death for many Greeks. The exodus was given greater impetus with the Istanbul Pogrom of September 1955 which led to thousands of Greeks fleeing the city, eventually reducing the Christian Greek population to about 7,000 by 1978 and to about 2,500 by 2006 before beginning to increase again after 2008.
Percentage of Kurdish population in Turkey by regionKurdish mother and child, Van, Turkey. 1973
Ethnic Kurds are the largest minority in Turkey, composing around 20% of the population according to Milliyet, 19% of the total populace or c. 14 million people according to the CIA World Factbook, and as much as 23% according to Kurdologist David McDowall.[1][126] Unlike the Turks, the Kurds speak an Iranian language. There are Kurds living all over Turkey, but most live to the east and southeast of the country, from where they originate.
In the 1930s, Turkish government policy aimed to forcibly assimilate and Turkify local Kurds. Since 1984, Kurdish resistance movements included both peaceful political activities for basic civil rights for Kurds within Turkey, and violent armed rebellion for a separate Kurdish state.[127]
Most Laz people today live in Turkey, but the Laz minority group has no official status in Turkey. The Laz are Sunni Muslims. Only a minority are bilingual in Turkish and their native Laz language which belongs to the Kartvelian 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 also 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 Batumi fled to the Ottoman Empire, settling along the southern Black Sea coast to the east of Samsun.
Levantines continue to live in Istanbul (mostly in the districts of Galata, Beyoğlu and Nişantaşı), İzmir (mostly in the districts of Karşıyaka, Bornova and Buca), and the lesser port city Mersin where they had been influential for creating and reviving a tradition of opera.[128] Famous people of the present-day Levantine community in Turkey include Maria Rita Epik, Franco-Levantine Caroline Giraud Koç and Italo-Levantine Giovanni Scognamillo.
Lom people
The Lom people live in the Black sea Region, and in Kars, Ardahan, and Artvin. They are also named as Poşa, they speak Lomavren .
Ossetians emigrated from North Ossetia since the second half of the 19th century, end of Caucasian War. Today, the majority of them live in Ankara and Istanbul. There are 24 Ossetian villages in central and eastern Anatolia. The Ossetians in Turkey are divided into three major groups, depending on their history of immigration and ensuing events: those living in Kars (Sarıkamış) and Erzurum, those in Sivas, Tokat and Yozgat and those in Muş and Bitlis.[130]
Turkish Cypriots or Cypriot Turks are a group of Turks that arrived in Turkey in different waves from 1878 to the current. Currently the Turkish Cypriot population is estimated to be between the 300,000 to over 650,000.
The Roma in Turkey number approximately 700,000 according to Milliyet.[69]Sulukule is the oldest Roma settlement in Europe. By different Turkish and Non-Turkish estimates the number of Romani is up to 4 or 5 million[134][135] while according to a Turkish source, they are only 0.05% of Turkey's population (or roughly persons).[136] The descendants of the Ottoman Roma today are known as Xoraxane Roma and are of the Islamic faith.[137]
Russians in Turkey number about 50,000 citizens.[138] Russians began migrating to Turkey during the first half of the 1990s. Most were fleeing the economic problems prevalent after the dissolution of the Soviet Union. During this period, many Russian immigrants intermarried and assimilated with Turkish locals, giving rise to a rapid increase in mixed marriages.[138] There is a Russian Association of Education, Culture and Cooperation which aims to expand Russian language and culture in Turkey as well as promote the interests of the community.
The Zazas are a people in eastern Turkey who natively speak the Zaza language.[140] Their heartland, the Dersim region, consists of Tunceli, Bingöl provinces and parts of Elazığ, Erzincan and Diyarbakır provinces.[141][142] Their language Zazaki is a language spoken in eastern Anatolia between the rivers Euphrates and Tigris. It belongs to the northwest-Iranian group of the Iranian language branch of the Indo-European language family. The Zaza language is related to Kurdish, Persian and Balōchi. An exact indication of the number of Zaza speakers is unknown. Internal Zaza sources estimate the total number of Zaza speakers at 3 to 6 million.[143][144]
In Turkey, atheism is the biggest group after Islam. The percentage of atheists according to polls apparently rose from about 2% in 2012[145] to approximately 3% in 2018 KONDA Survey.[146]
Bahá'í
The house where the founder of the Bahá'í Faith, Bahá'u'lláh stayed in, Edirne
Orthodox Christianity forms a tiny minority in Turkey, comprising far less than one tenth of one percent of the entire population. The provinces of Istanbul and Hatay, which includes Antakya, are the main centres of Turkish Christianity, with comparatively dense Christian populations, though they are very small minorities. The main variant of Christianity present in Turkey is the Eastern Orthodox branch, focused mainly in the Greek Orthodox Church.
There are around 35,000 Catholics,[148] constituting 0.05% of the population. The faithful are of the Latin Church, Melkite Greek Catholic Church, Armenian Catholic Church, Syriac Catholic Church, and Chaldean Catholic Church. Most Latin Catholics are Levantines of mainly Italian or French background, although a few are ethnic Turks (who are usually converts via marriage to Levantines or other non-Turkish Catholics). Byzantine, Armenian, Syriac, and Chaldean Catholics are generally members of the Greek (and Syrian), Armenian, Syrian, and Assyrian minority groups respectively. Turkey's Catholics are concentrated in Istanbul.[citation needed]
In February 2006, Catholic priest Andrea Santoro, an Italian missionary working in Turkey for 10 years, was shot twice at his church near the Black Sea.[149] He had written a letter to the Pope asking him to visit Turkey.[150]Pope Benedict XVI visited Turkey in November 2006.[151] Relations had been rocky since Pope Benedict XVI had stated his opposition to Turkey joining the European Union.[152]The Council of Catholic Bishops met with the Turkish prime minister in 2004 to discuss restrictions and difficulties such as property issues.[153] More recently, Bishop Luigi Padovese, on June 6, 2010, the Vicar Apostolic of Turkey, was killed.
Protestants comprise far less than one tenth of one percent of the population of Turkey, or less than 10,000 people.[148] Even so, there is an Alliance of Protestant Churches in Turkey.[154][155] The constitution of Turkey recognizes freedom of religion for individuals. The Armenian Protestants own three Istanbul Churches from the 19th century.[155] On 4 November 2006, a Protestant place of worship was attacked with six Molotov cocktails.[156] Turkish media have criticized Christian missionary activity intensely.[157]
The exact number of Alawites in Turkey is unknown, but there were 185 000 Alawites in 1970.[162] As Muslims, they are not recorded separately from Sunnis in ID registration. In the 1965 census (the last Turkish census where informants were asked their mother tongue), 180,000 people in the three provinces declared their mother tongue as Arabic. However, Arabic-speaking Sunni and Christian people are also included in this figure.
Alawites traditionally speak the same dialect of Levantine Arabic with Syrian Alawites. Arabic is best preserved in rural communities and Samandağ. Younger people in Çukurova cities and (to a lesser extent) in İskenderun tend to speak Turkish. Turkish spoken by Alawites is distinguished by Alawites and non-Alawites alike with its particular accents and vocabulary. Knowledge of Arabic alphabet is confined to religious leaders and men who had worked or studied in Arab countries.
Alevis are the biggest religious minority in Turkey. Nearly 15%[163]-25% of all Turkish population is in this group. They are mainly Turk but there are significant Kurd and Zaza populations who are Alevi[164]
Yazidis in Turkey is in the area of the Yazidi homeland, along with Syria and Iraq. The Yazidi population in Turkey was estimated at around 22.000 in 1984.[166] Earlier figures are difficult to obtain and verify, but some estimate there were about 100.000 Yazidi in Turkey in the early years of the 20th century.[167]
Most Yazidis left the country and went abroad in the 1980s and 1990s, mostly to Germany and other European countries where they got asylum due to the persecution as an ethnic and religious minority in Turkey. The area they resided was in the south eastern area of Turkey, an area that had/has heavy PKK fighting. Now a few hundred Yazidi are believed to be left in Turkey.
Tengrists
In intellectual circles in Turkey, more and more Turkish people are turning to Tengrism. As an example, a lawyer who possessed an ID card which states that Tengrism is a religion won a court case.[168][169][170]
Demographic features of the population of Turkey include population density, ethnicity, education level, health of the populace, economic status, religious affiliations and other aspects of the population.
Western Thrace or West Thrace also known as Greek Thrace or Aegean Thrace, is a geographic and historical region of Greece, between the Nestos and Evros rivers in the northeast of the country; East Thrace, which lies east of the river Evros, forms the European part of Turkey, and the area to the north, in Bulgaria, is known as Northern Thrace.
Turkish people or Turks are the largest Turkic people who speak various dialects of the Turkish language and form a majority in Turkey and Northern Cyprus. In addition, centuries-old ethnic Turkish communities still live across other former territories of the Ottoman Empire. Article 66 of the Constitution of Turkey defines a Turk as anyone who is a citizen of Turkey. While the legal use of the term Turkish as it pertains to a citizen of Turkey is different from the term's ethnic definition, the majority of the Turkish population are of Turkish ethnicity. The vast majority of Turks are Muslims and follow the Sunni faith.
Bulgarian Turks are ethnic Turks from Bulgaria. According to the 2021 census, there were 508,375 Bulgarians of Turkish descent, roughly 8.4% of the population, making them the country's largest ethnic minority. Bulgarian Turks also comprise the largest single population of Turks in the Balkans. They primarily live in the southern province of Kardzhali and the northeastern provinces of Shumen, Silistra, Razgrad and Targovishte. There is also a diaspora outside Bulgaria in countries such as Turkey, Austria, the Netherlands, Sweden, Norway and Romania, the most significant of which are the Bulgarian Turks in Turkey.
Muhacir are the estimated millions of Ottoman Muslim citizens and their descendants born after the onset of the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire. Muhacirs are mostly Turks but also Albanians, Bosniaks, Circassians, Crimean Tatars, Pomaks, Macedonian Muslims, Greek Muslims, Serb Muslims, Georgian Muslims, and Muslim Roma who emigrated to East Thrace and Anatolia from the late 18th century until the end of the 20th century, mainly to escape ongoing persecution in their homelands.
The 1923 population exchange between Greece and Turkey stemmed from the "Convention Concerning the Exchange of Greek and Turkish Populations" signed at Lausanne, Switzerland, on 30 January 1923, by the governments of Greece and Turkey. It involved at least 1.6 million people, most of whom were forcibly made refugees and de jure denaturalized from their homelands.
Turkification, Turkization, or Turkicization describes a shift whereby populations or places receive or adopt Turkic attributes such as culture, language, history, or ethnicity. However, often this term is more narrowly applied to mean specifically Turkish rather than merely Turkic, meaning that it refers more frequently to the Ottoman Empire's policies or the Turkish nationalist policies of the Republic of Turkey toward ethnic minorities in Turkey. As the Turkic states developed and grew, there were many instances of this cultural shift.
Minorities in Greece are small in size compared to Balkan regional standards, and the country is largely ethnically homogeneous. This is mainly due to the population exchanges between Greece and neighboring Turkey and Bulgaria, which removed most Muslims and those Christian Slavs who did not identify as Greeks from Greek territory. The treaty also provided for the resettlement of ethnic Greeks from those countries, later to be followed by refugees. There is no official information for the size of the ethnic, linguistic and religious minorities because asking the population questions pertaining to the topic have been abolished since 1951.
The Greeks in Turkey constitute a small population of Greek and Greek-speaking Eastern Orthodox Christians who mostly live in Istanbul, as well as on the two islands of the western entrance to the Dardanelles: Imbros and Tenedos. Greeks are one of the four ethnic minorities officially recognized in Turkey by the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne, together with Jews, Armenians, and Bulgarians.
Turks of Western Thrace are ethnic Turks who live in Western Thrace, in the province of East Macedonia and Thrace in Northern Greece.
The Muslim minority of Greece is the only explicitly recognized minority in Greece. It numbered 97,605 according to the 1991 census, and unofficial estimates ranged up to 140,000 people or 1.24% of the total population, according to the United States Department of State.
Turkey, officially the Republic of Türkiye, is a country mainly located in Anatolia in West Asia, with a smaller part called East Thrace in Southeast Europe. It borders the Black Sea to the north; Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Iran to the east; Iraq, Syria, and the Mediterranean Sea to the south; and the Aegean Sea, Greece, and Bulgaria to the west. Turkey is home to over 85 million people; most are ethnic Turks, while ethnic Kurds are the largest ethnic minority. Officially a secular state, Turkey has a Muslim-majority population. Ankara is Turkey's capital and second-largest city, while Istanbul is its largest city and economic and financial center. Other major cities include İzmir, Bursa, and Antalya.
The languages of Turkey, apart from the official language Turkish, include the widespread Kurdish (Kurmanji), Zazaki, and Arabic, and a number of less common minority languages. Four minority languages are officially recognized in the Republic of Turkey by the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne and the Turkey-Bulgaria Friendship Treaty of 18 October 1925: Armenian, Bulgarian, Greek, and Hebrew. In 2013, the Ankara 13th Circuit Administrative Court ruled that the minority provisions of the Lausanne Treaty should also apply to Assyrians in Turkey and the Syriac language.
Ethnic groups in the Middle East are ethnolinguistic groupings in the "transcontinental" region that is commonly a geopolitical term designating the intercontinental region comprising West Asia without the South Caucasus, and also comprising Egypt in North Africa. The Middle East has historically been a crossroad of different cultures and languages. Since the 1960s, the changes in political and economic factors have significantly altered the ethnic composition of groups in the region. While some ethnic groups have been present in the region for millennia, others have arrived fairly recently through immigration. The largest socioethnic groups in the region are Egyptians, Arabs, Turks, Persians, Kurds, and Azerbaijanis but there are dozens of other ethnic groups that have hundreds of thousands, and sometimes millions of members.
Bulgarians in Turkey form a minority of Turkey. They are Bulgarian expatriates in Turkey or Turkish citizens who were born there of full or partially Bulgarian descent. People of Bulgarian ancestry include a large number from the Pomak and a very small number of Orthodox of ethnic Bulgarian origin. Bulgarian Christians are officially recognized as a minority by the Turkey-Bulgaria Friendship Treaty of 18 October 1925.
The demographics of the Ottoman Empire include population density, ethnicity, education level, religious affiliations and other aspects of the population.
Albanians in Turkey are ethnic Albanian citizens and denizens of Turkey. They consist of Albanians who arrived during the Ottoman period, Kosovar/Macedonian and Tosk Cham Albanians fleeing from Serbian and Greek persecution after the beginning of the Balkan Wars, alongside some Albanians from Montenegro and Albania proper.
In Turkey, xenophobia and discrimination are present in its society and throughout its history, including ethnic discrimination, religious discrimination and institutional racism against non-Muslim and non-Sunni minorities. This appears mainly in the form of negative attitudes and actions by some people towards people who are not considered ethnically Turkish, notably Kurds, Armenians, Arabs, Assyrians, Greeks, Jews, and peripatetic groups like Romani people, Domari, Abdals and Lom.
Place name changes in Turkey have been undertaken, periodically, in bulk from 1913 to the present by successive Turkish governments. Thousands of names within the Turkish Republic or its predecessor the Ottoman Empire have been changed from their popular or historic alternatives in favour of recognizably Turkish names, as part of Turkification policies. The governments have argued that such names are foreign or divisive, while critics of the changes have described them as chauvinistic. Names changed were usually of Armenian, Greek, Georgian, Laz, Bulgarian, Kurdish (Zazaki), Persian, Syriac, or Arabic origin.
During the decline and dissolution of the Ottoman Empire, Muslim inhabitants living in Muslim-minority territories previously under Ottoman control often found themselves persecuted after borders were re-drawn. These populations were subject to genocide, expropriation, massacres, religious persecution, mass rape, and ethnic cleansing.
↑ "Turkey", The World Factbook, Central Intelligence Agency, 22 September 2021, archived from the original on 10 January 2021, retrieved 30 September 2021
↑ Kaya, Nurcan (24 November 2015). "Teaching in and Studying Minority Languages in Turkey: A Brief Overview of Current Issues and Minority Schools". European Yearbook of Minority Issues Online. 12 (1): 315–338. doi:10.1163/9789004306134_013. ISSN2211-6117. Turkey is a nation–state built on remnants of the Ottoman Empire where non-Muslim minorities were guaranteed the right to set up educational institutions; however, since its establishment, it has officially recognised only Armenians, Greeks and Jews as minorities and guaranteed them the right to manage educational institutions as enshrined in the Treaty of Lausanne. [...] Private language teaching courses teach 'traditionally used languages', elective language courses have been introduced in public schools and universities are allowed to teach minority languages.
↑ Toktas, Sule (2006). "EU enlargement conditions and minority protection: a reflection on Turkey's non-Muslim minorities". East European Quarterly. 40: 489–519. ISSN0012-8449. Turkey signed the Covenant on 15 August 2000 and ratified it on 23 September 2003. However, Turkey put a reservation on Article 27 of the Covenant which limited the scope of the right of ethnic, religious or linguistic minorities to enjoy their own culture, to profess and practice their own religion or to use their own language. This reservation provides that this right will be implemented and applied in accordance with the relevant provisions of the Turkish Constitution and the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne. This implies that Turkey grants educational right in minority languages only to the recognized minorities covered by the Lausanne who are the Armenians, Greeks and the Jews.
↑ Phillips, Thomas James (16 December 2020). "The (In-)Validity of Turkey's Reservation to Article 27 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights". International Journal on Minority and Group Rights. 27 (1): 66–93. doi:10.1163/15718115-02701001. ISSN1385-4879. S2CID201398995. The fact that Turkish constitutional law takes an even more restrictive approach to minority rights than required under the Treaty of Lausanne was recognised by the UN Committee on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (CERD) in its concluding observations on the combined fourth to sixth periodic reports of Turkey. The CERD noted that "the treaty of Lausanne does not explicitly prohibit the recognition of other groups as minorities" and that Turkey should consider recognising the minority status of other groups, such as Kurds. 50 In practice, this means that Turkey grants minority rights to "Greek, Armenian and Jewish minority communities while denying their possible impact for unrecognized minority groups (e.g. Kurds, Alevis, Arabs, Syriacs, Protestants, Roma etc.)".
↑ Icduygu, A., Toktas, S., & Soner, B. A. (2008). The politics of population in a nation-building process: Emigration of non-Muslims from Turkey. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 31(2), 358–389.
↑ Abdal by Peter Alford Andrews pages 435 to 438 in Ethnic groups in the Republic of Turkey / compiled and edited by Peter Alford Andrews, with the assistance of Rüdiger Benninghaus (Wiesbaden: Dr. Ludwig Reichert, 1989) ISBN3-88226-418-7
↑ Modern History of Armenia in the Works of Foreign Authors [Novaya istoriya Armenii v trudax sovremennix zarubezhnix avtorov], edited by R. Sahakyan, Yerevan, 1993, p. 15 (in Russian)
↑ "Turkey renames 'divisive' animals". BBC. 8 March 2005. Retrieved 16 January 2013. Animal name changes: Red fox known as Vulpes Vulpes Kurdistanica becomes Vulpes Vulpes. Wild sheep called Ovis Armeniana becomes Ovis Orientalis Anatolicus Roe deer known as Capreolus Capreolus Armenus becomes Capreolus Cuprelus Capreolus.
↑ Şentürk, Cem (15 October 2007). "The Germans in Turkey". Turkofamerica. Retrieved 30 November 2010.
↑ European Commission for Democracy through Law (2002). The Protection of National Minorities by Their Kin-State. Council of Europe. p.142. ISBN978-92-871-5082-0. Retrieved 2 February 2013. In Turkey the Orthodox minority who remained in Istanbul, Imvros and Tenedos governed by the same provisions of the treaty of Lausanne was gradually shrunk from more than 200,000 in 1930 to less than 3,000 today.
↑ Kilic, Ecevit (7 September 2008). "Sermaye nasıl el değiştirdi?". Sabah (in Turkish). Retrieved 25 December 2008. 6–7 Eylül olaylarından önce İstanbul'da 135 bin Rum yaşıyordu. Sonrasında bu sayı 70 bine düştü. 1978'e gelindiğinde bu rakam 7 bindi.
↑ "toplumsal yapı araştırması 2006"(PDF). Archived from the original(PDF) on 30 October 2010. Retrieved 14 October 2023. Bu düzenlemeyle ortaya çıkan tabloda Türkiye'de yetişkinlerin (18 yaş ve üstündekilerin) etnik kimliklerin dağılımı ...% 0,05 Roman ... şeklindedir.
Original: Елена Марушиакова, Веселин Попов (2000) "Циганите в Османската империя". Литавра, София (Litavra Publishers, Sofia).(in Bulgarian)
1 2 «Получить точные статистические данные относительно численности соотечественников в Турции не представляется возможным… в целом сегодня можно говорить примерно о 50 тыс. проживающих в Турции россиян». // Интервью журналу «Консул» № 4 /19/, декабрь 2009 года на сайте МИД РФ
↑ Tahta, Selahattin 2002: Ursprung und Entwicklung der Zaza-Nationalbewegung im Lichte ihrer politischen und literarischen Veröffentlichungen. Unpublished Master Thesis. Berlin.
Bardakci, Mehmet, et al. Religious minorities in Turkey: Alevi, Armenians, and Syriacs and the struggle to desecuritize religious freedom. Springer, 2017.
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