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Turkey Facts: [Introduction - Home Page] Turkish Cities: [Istanbul] [Ankara] Turkey Pictures: [Gallery 1] [Gallery 2] [Gallery 3]
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Turkey (Turkie)III. People and Society The population of Turkey is 70,413,958 (2006 estimate). The average population density is 91 persons per sq km (237 per sq mi). Urbanization has progressed rapidly in recent decades. In the mid-1970s, Turkey was still a predominantly rural society, with nearly 60 percent of its citizens living in the countryside. In 2003, 66 percent of the people lived in urban areas. The highest population concentrations are in İstanbul and in coastal regions. A. Principal Cities İstanbul is the largest city in Turkey, with a population of 9,451,000 (2000). It is the country’s primary cultural, financial, manufacturing, and tourism center, as well as its largest port. Ankara, the capital, has a population of 3,023,000 (2000). İzmir, population 2,409,000 (2000), is the country’s second largest port, as well as a major industrial and tourism center. Adana, population 1,294,000 (2000), is the main industrial center of the south, as well as the home of the İncirlik air base, an important North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) facility. Bursa, population 1,304,000 (2000), is an ancient city in western Anatolia that served as the first capital of the Ottoman Empire. The modern city is a manufacturing center. Turkey has four other cities with populations exceeding 500,000. These are Gaziantep (930,000), Konya (742,690), Mersin (537,843), and Antalya (603,190). Each of these cities has grown rapidly in recent decades as migrants from rural areas have arrived seeking work in the proliferating factories. Other important cities are Kayseri (population 536,392), Diyarbakır (545,983), Eskişehir (482,793), Şanlıurfa (381,938), Samsun (363,180), and Malatya (381,081). B. Ethnic Groups About 80 percent of the people of Turkey identify themselves as ethnic Turks. Before 1900, the population of Anatolia and Eastern Thrace was more ethnically diverse, with Turks making up about 55 percent of the total; another 30 percent were Armenians and Greeks. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, several forced movements of populations resulted in the removal of most Armenians and Greeks from Anatolia. Replacing them were non-Turkish Muslims, including Albanians and Bosnians, who were forced to leave newly independent countries in the Balkan Peninsula. These countries were established out of former provinces of the Ottoman Empire. In the same period, thousands of Muslim Circassians from Russia’s Caucasus region also immigrated to Turkey to escape religious persecution in Russia. Most Balkan and Circassian Muslim immigrants were assimilated as Turks within one generation. Turkey has continued to welcome Muslim immigrants from former Ottoman areas in southeastern Europe and from Turkic-speaking regions of the Caucasus and Central Asia, taking in some 350,000 Muslim refugees between 1989 and 2000. The Kurds are Turkey’s largest ethnic minority, comprising about 17 percent of the country’s total population. Their historical homeland encompasses 11 provinces in southeast Turkey, which borders the Kurdish-populated regions of Iran, Iraq, and Syria. More than half of all Kurds live in southeastern Turkey. The ancient city of Diyarbakır on the Tigris River, a major urban area in the southeast, has been a Kurdish cultural and political center since Ottoman times. In the late 1960s, many Kurds began migrating from southeastern Anatolia to İstanbul and the industrial cities of central and western Anatolia, as well as to Germany. Ethnic conflict between Kurds and Turks increased after 1923 following the establishment of the Republic of Turkey, which implemented uniform national educational and social policies. The Kurds especially resented official efforts to discourage use of the Kurdish language and the banning of Kurdish political parties. In 1984 the Kurdistān Workers Party (PKK) launched an armed uprising against the Turkish government. The PKK’s aim was to create a separate Kurdish state, and its guerrilla war against the Turkish military continued in the rural regions of southeastern Anatolia for 15 years until it declared a de facto truce in 2000. Arabs comprise the third largest ethnic group in Turkey. They are concentrated in the southern Mediterranean province of Hatay, with smaller communities in the adjacent provinces of Adana to the north and Gaziantep to the east, as well as in the two westernmost provinces of the southeast. Arabs constitute less than 2 percent of the country’s total population. Several smaller ethnic groups also live in Turkey. The Laz are a non-Turkic Muslim community who live along the eastern coast of the Black Sea. Muslim Georgians live in northeastern Turkey in the mountainous region bordering the Republic of Georgia. Small communities of Armenians and Greeks still reside in İstanbul. Turkey’s small population of Ladino-speaking Jews are the descendants of Jews expelled from Spain in 1492 during the Inquisition. C. Language The official language of Turkey is Turkish (Turkish Language). Turkish belongs to the Altaic superfamily of languages that are spoken in most of central and northern Asia. About 15 percent of the population speaks a different primary language, usually Kurdish or Arabic. In a major language reform initiated in 1928, Turkey adopted a modified Latin alphabet in place of the Arabic script that had been used for centuries to write Turkish. The objective of this reform was to make literacy in Turkish easier to achieve, as the reformers believed that Arabic inadequately represented the sounds of Turkish vowels. Between 1932 and 1950, the official Turkish Language Society made a concerted effort to purge the Turkish language of loanwords from Arabic, Persian, and other foreign languages. D. Religion Religious freedom is guaranteed by the Turkish constitution, and there is no official state religion. About 99 percent of Turkey’s people are identified as Muslim, or followers of Islam. However, Muslim identity in Turkey is complex because there are multiple interpretations of Islam. Secular Muslims, for example, insist that religion is strictly a private matter for each person. This secular view informs Turkish law, which forbids the wearing of religious garb except by authorized religious leaders in places of worship or during religious services. Nonsecular Muslims generally believe the state has a hostile attitude toward religious institutions and practices, and have called for official neutrality. The vast majority of Turkey’s Muslims, or about 80 percent of the population, are followers of Sunni Islam, the larger of the two main branches of Islam. However, there is no uniform definition of the principles of Sunni Islam, and several interpretations of Sunni theology are practiced within Turkey. About 20 percent of Turkish Sunnis practice various types of Sufism, a form of Islamic mysticism. Some Sufis adopt liberal, secular views on religion while others are quite conservative. Alevi Muslims constitute another important Islamic group in Turkey. Alevis practice a distinct form of Shia Islam, the second main denomination of Islam. Alevis are distinguished from other Shia groups by having no authoritative religious texts, other than the Qur’an (Koran), which set forth their distinctive beliefs. The Alevi religion thus is based on oral traditions and its tenets are kept secret from non-Alevis. Alevis experienced periodic persecutions during the final centuries of Ottoman rule, leaving a legacy of suspicion toward government among Alevi communities. Most Alevis are ethnic Turks, although they also include significant numbers of Kurds and Arabs. Strict Sunnis consider Alevi theology as heretical, and religious riots that erupted in the late 1970s and early 1990s left many Alevis dead. Turkey is home to a variety of other heterodox Islamic groups. They include Twelve Imam Shia Muslims; Yazidis, a sect that combines elements of Islam, Christianity, Judaism, and paganism; and the Donme. The Donme descend from the followers of a 17th-century Jewish convert to Islam who established a religion that includes beliefs from Islam and Judaism. Although Christians made up a substantial religious community during the Ottoman Empire, fewer than 100,000 Christians live in Turkey today, and their numbers continue to decline due to emigration. Both the Orthodox and Roman Catholic churches maintain ecclesiastical offices in İstanbul. Emigration similarly has reduced Turkey’s once large Jewish population, which today numbers fewer than 20,000. E. Education Before the early 19th century, Muslim and Christian communities in the Ottoman Empire operated schools in which children received religious instruction. Modern schools that trained students in math, science, and foreign languages were established by the government and by private groups beginning in the 1830s. The generation of leaders who later established the Republic of Turkey in 1923 attended modern schools prior to World War I (1914-1918). These schools served only a small elite group, however, and at the birth of the republic more than 90 percent of Turkey’s people were unable to read and write. Turkish president Mustafa Kemal Atatürk believed that the new nation would not become strong, modern, and prosperous unless the government provided a basic education to all citizens free of charge. E1. Primary and Secondary Education The original public school system established under the Turkish republic included primary schools (grades one through five) and secondary schools (grades six through twelve). Attendance in primary schools was required for all boys and girls between the ages of 6 and 12, although in many places this was not enforced owing to a lack of facilities or to local resistance. Private schools were initially abolished, but some private schools were permitted to open after 1950. The secondary schools subsequently were subdivided into three-year middle schools and four-year high schools, called lycees. This system remained in effect until 1997, when the government redefined primary education as grades one through eight and made attendance obligatory for all eight years. The broad extension of free primary and secondary education led to a significant increase in adult literacy in Turkey. In 2005 an estimated 87.6 percent of people over the age of 15 were defined as literate. However, school attendance beyond the primary level has never been compulsory, and many families, especially in small towns and rural areas of Anatolia, discourage their daughters from continuing in school after the age of 13 or 14. Consequently, the rate of literacy for adult females (80.1 percent) is lower than for adult males (94.9 percent). In addition, young women made up only 37 percent of high school students, according to 2000 figures. E2. Higher Education The Republic of Turkey also established a public system of higher education. As in the primary and secondary system, private schools were at first banned, although since 1980 the government has authorized private colleges. In the early 2000s there were more than 800 institutions of higher education of all kinds in Turkey. These included one- and two-year institutes that gave certificates for specialized post-secondary training as well as four-year colleges and universities offering various post-graduate degree programs. In the largest cities of İstanbul and Ankara, there were several large universities, while other major cities had at least one college. The most important educational institutions include the University of İstanbul (founded as a seminary in 1453); the Aegean University (1955), at İzmir; the University of Ankara (1946); and the Middle East Technical University (1956), also at Ankara. Entrance to all institutes of higher education is competitive and based on standardized entrance examinations. In 2001, 1,677,936 students were enrolled in all institutions of higher education in Turkey. About 59 percent of these students were men and 41 percent were women. F. Social Structure During the long period of Ottoman rule, Turkey’s social structure was dominated by the Ottoman ruling family, high-ranking government officials, Islamic religious leaders, wealthy landlords, and military leaders. Rural farmers, who made up the great majority of the population, were at the bottom of the social scale and generally lived at a subsistence level. Government reforms implemented after the founding of the Republic of Turkey in 1923 significantly altered the nation’s social structure. The ruling Ottoman families were deposed and religious leaders and institutions lost much of their former power. Military leaders and government officials maintained high prestige, however, and large landowners effectively blocked most land reform proposals. At the same time, vigorous state economic planning stimulated the growth of manufacturing, initiating Turkey’s transformation from a primarily rural, agricultural society to a primarily urbanized, industrial one. In the process of this transformation, many more people became business owners, factory workers, and professionals, and new social groups formed. In contemporary Turkey, education is one of the most important determinants of social status. In urban areas, the basic social division is between an educated class on one side and a less-educated working class on the other. But education makes considerable mobility possible. In the countryside, social divisions are based largely on the amount of arable (suitable for cultivation) land owned, and wealthy landowners still dominate many rural areas. Young people who migrate from rural communities to cities often find it difficult to move out of the working class unless they are able to obtain further education. G. Way of Life The family is at the heart of daily life in Turkey, whether among Turks, Kurds, or Arabs. Members of extended families typically live near each other in urban neighborhoods, and most social interactions involve visits to the homes of relatives—parents, siblings, grandparents, and aunts and uncles. Boys and girls tend to grow up regarding their same-gender cousins as their closest friends. From early adolescence through adulthood, most people strive to behave in such a way so as not to bring shame to the family. Because of the strong emphasis on family life, young people generally seek to get married soon after finishing their education. In practice, this means that women, especially those in the working classes and rural areas, are expected to give greater priority to taking care of a husband and rearing children than to pursuing a career outside the home. The importance of family life is also evident in the acquisition of consumer goods, which are purchased primarily to enhance family prestige rather than individual status. Thus, the most popular consumer goods are those that can benefit multiple family members, including appliances and electronic items such as radios, televisions, and computers, as opposed to goods used exclusively by one family member. The people of Turkey dress like Europeans and North Americans. Among middle- and upper-middle-class youth, status is attached to wearing internationally famous name-brand clothes and shoes. The most popular sports in Turkey are soccer and wrestling. The third-place finish of Turkey’s national soccer team during the 2002 World Cup games was a source of great pride, and Turkey has won many international wrestling prizes. Major holidays include the Muslim religious feast of Şeker Bayrami (“sugar holiday”), which comes at the close of the holy month of Ramadan, the ninth lunar month; and Kurban Bayrami (“sacrifice holiday”), held during the 12th lunar month. Secular holidays include National Sovereignty Day (April 23, also Children’s Day), Atatürk’s Memorial and Youth Day (May 19), Victory Day (August 30), and Republic Day (October 29). H. Social Issues Matters of religious expression and identity are controversial issues in Turkey. Although the Turkish government has promoted a secular (nonreligious) state, some pious Muslims have supported greater public expression of religion. For example, they would like public schools to offer religious education and they would like the ban lifted on women covering their head with religious headscarves in schools and government offices. Secularists fear these changes would mark the first steps toward a religious state. The divisions between secularists and pious Muslims once corresponded to a class division between the educated urban elite, which defended the secular state, and the poorer urban and rural populations, which preserved religious tradition. Economic reforms, however, have helped many devout Muslims improve their social and economic status. Thus, the conflict over religious expression has also moved up the social, political, and economic ladder into elite circles. Cultural rights for Turkey’s Kurdish minority constitutes another disruptive social issue. Some Turkish nationalists view the Kurds’ demands for Kurdish-language radio and television broadcasts, publications, and education as a threat to the country’s national integrity. These Turks have organized vigilante-like groups who have attacked Kurds and their property in cities with mixed Kurdish and Turkish populations. Groups who defend the rights of Kurds complain that the Turkish government does little to protect Kurds from such attacks and even may encourage them.
"Turkey," Microsoft® Encarta® Online Encyclopedia 2006 |
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