Turkish people

Not to be confused with Turkic peoples.

The Turkish people (Turkish: Türkler), or Turks, are the world's largest Turkic ethnic group; they speak different dialects of the Turkish language and live mainly in Turkey and Cyprus. There are Turkish communities in the Balkans as well.

Turks

Türkler
Map of the Turkish people in the world
Total population
c. 80 million
Regions with significant populations
Turkey  60,000,000–65,000,000[1][2]  Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus  315,000[3]
Germany	3,000,000 to over 7,000,000[4][5][6][7]
Iraq	3,000,000–5,000,000[48][49][50]
United States	1,000,000–3,000,000[8][9][10][11]
Syria	1,000,000–1,700,000g[51][52]
Libya	1,000,000–1,400,000h[53][54]
Netherlands	500,000 to over 2,000,000[12][13][14][15]
France	over 1,000,000[16][17][18
Bulgaria	588,318–800,000[62][63][64]

Culture

Religion

The Blue Mosque in Istanbul, Turkey, is a religious building.

Turkish people are predominantly Sunni Muslim, the largest branch of Islam. Majority of Turks are practising its Hanafi denomination. The most followed branch after Sunnism is Alevism-Bektashism.

Traditions

Turkish traditions can be found in Turkey but can also be found in the other Turkic, the Balkan, and Western Asian countries. This includes oil wrestling, sünnet festival of circumcision of boys, belly dance, Karakucak wrestling, etc.

Diaspora

The Turkish people are populated in the former Ottoman Empire. They form a majority in Turkey and Northern Cyprus.

There are a big Turkish diaspora. There are also large Turkish minorities in the Balkans, the Caucasus, and the Arab world. Turkish people are the largest minority group in Bulgaria. There are large Turkish communities in the Western Thrace region of Greece, the Dobruja region of Romania, the Akkar region in Lebanon as well as in North Macedonia. Turkish people are also the largest ethnic minority group in Austria, Denmark, Netherlands, and in Germany (see Turks in Germany).

References

1. Garibova, Jala (2011), "A Pan-Turkic Dream: Language Unification of Turks", in Fishman, Joshua; Garcia, Ofelia (eds.), Handbook of Language and Ethnic Identity: The Success-Failure Continuum in Language and Ethnic Identity Efforts, Oxford University Press, p. 268, ISBN 9780199837991, Approximately 200 million people,... speak nearly 40 Turkic languages and dialects. Türkiye is the largest Turkic state, with about 60 million ethnic Turks living in its territories.
2. Hobbs, Joseph J. (2017), Fundamentals of World Regional Geography, Cengage, p. 223, ISBN 9781305854956, The greatest are the 65 million Turks of Turkey, who speak Turkish, a Turkic language...
3. "KKTC 2011 NÜFUS VE KONUT SAYIMI" (PDF). Archived (PDF) from the original on 27 September 2013. Retrieved 14 February 2014.