- Population
- ~11,000,000-14,000,000
- Language
- Northern Kurdish
- Religion
- Islam
- Location
- South-eastern and eastern Anatolia (Diyarbakır, Van, Şanlıurfa, Mardin, Batman, Şırnak, Hakkari, Ağrı, Muş, Bitlis, Siirt), central Anatolian villages (Haymana, Cihanbeyli), and the western cities, above all Istanbul, Izmir, Mersin and Adana
Kurmanji Kurds are Türkiye's largest minority, an Iranian-speaking people whose mountain homeland stretches from Lake Van and Hakkari to Diyarbakır and Mardin, and who now live in almost every Turkish city, with Istanbul holding more Kurds than any city in the world. Unlike the Hanafi Turks around them, most follow the Shafi'i school of Sunni Islam, and Naqshbandi and Qadiri Sufi sheikhs still carry weight in the south-east. Decades of language bans, the 1984-2025 conflict and the emptying of some 3,000 villages pushed millions west, and many children of migrants now speak Turkish better than Kurdish. Each spring Newroz bonfires and line dances (govend) fill Diyarbakır and Istanbul, and dengbêj singers keep alive long unaccompanied ballads of tribal feuds and lost loves.
Read more- Population
- ~1,300,000-2,000,000
- Language
- Dimli (individual language)
- Religion
- Sunni Islam (Shafi'i school, Hanafi minority)
- Location
- Bingöl (except the Alevi north), Elazığ (Palu, Maden, Kovancılar), northern Diyarbakır (Hani, Lice, Kulp, Dicle, Eğil, Ergani, Çermik, Çüngüş), Siverek (Şanlıurfa), Gerger (Adıyaman), Mutki (Bitlis), Baykan (Siirt), Aksaray; large migrant communities in Istanbul, Ankara, İzmir, Adana and Mersin
The Southern Zazas, who call themselves Zaza, Dımli or Kırd, are the Sunni Muslim majority of the Zaza people, speakers of an Iranian language of their own that is not a dialect of Kurdish even though most of them live beside and identify with the Kurds. Their villages fill the upper Euphrates and Tigris valleys around Bingöl, Palu, Lice, Çermik, Siverek and Gerger, where most follow the Shafi'i school like their Kurdish neighbours, while the Zazas of Çermik, Çüngüş, Siverek and Gerger follow the Hanafi school of the Turks. The first books ever written in their language were poems in praise of the Prophet, the mewlid of Ehmedê Xasî printed in Diyarbakır in 1899, and the 1925 uprising of the Naqshbandi sheikh Said of Palu began in their country. War, poverty and earthquakes have sent about as many Southern Zazas to Istanbul, the coastal cities and Germany as remain at home, and fewer and fewer children grow up speaking the language.
Read more- Population
- ~500,000-2,000,000
- Language
- Balkan Romani
- Religion
- Islam - Sunni
- Location
- Istanbul (Sulukule-Karagümrük, Kuştepe, Kasımpaşa, Balat, Ahırkapı, Selamsız in Üsküdar), Eastern Thrace (Edirne, Keşan, Tekirdağ, Kırklareli, Vize, Çorlu), the Aegean (Izmir, Manisa, Aydın, Bergama), Bursa, Adapazarı, Ankara and other western cities
The Roma, who call themselves Romanlar and are labelled Çingene by other Turks, have lived in Thrace and Anatolia since Byzantine times, and Istanbul's Sulukule quarter is often called the oldest Roma settlement in Europe. Nearly all now speak Turkish as their first language and are Sunni Muslims, often of Sufi devotion, yet they remain a people apart: they marry within the community, live in their own quarters and face discrimination in jobs, schools and housing. Their musicians shaped Turkish popular and wedding music, with its clarinets, darbukas and 9/8 rhythm, and each May the Kakava-Hıdırellez festival in Edirne lights a great bonfire and sends wishes down the river at dawn. Many families make a living from music, flower selling, basket weaving, seasonal farm work and collecting scrap and paper.
Read more- Population
- ~500,000-800,000
- Language
- Levantine Arabic
- Religion
- Islam - Alawite (Nusayri)
- Location
- Hatay (Samandağ, Defne, Antakya, Arsuz, İskenderun) and the Çukurova plain (Adana, Tarsus, Mersin and 32 villages); migrants in Istanbul, Ankara and Izmir
Arab Alawites, who call themselves Arap Alevileri, are the same people as the Alawites of Syria's coast: Hatay belonged to Syria until 1939, and the Alawites of the Çukurova plain around Adana, Tarsus and Mersin descend from families who came down from the Syrian mountains in the nineteenth century. Their esoteric faith reveres Ali as a manifestation of God, keeps its inner teaching for initiated men and centres on saints' shrines rather than mosques, setting them apart both from Sunni Turks and from Türkiye's far larger Anatolian Alevi population. Their greatest feast is Gadir-i Hum, when shops close across Samandağ and Defne and great pots of hirise, a stew of wheat and meat, are shared, while at Hıdrellez in May crowds circle the shrine of Khidr on the Samandağ coast and leap over fires. Arabic is giving way to Turkish among the young, and the 2023 earthquake devastated their Hatay heartland of Antakya and Defne.
Read more- Population
- 500,000
- Language
- South Azerbaijani
- Religion
- Islam - Shia
- Location
- Iğdır, Kars and Ardahan in the north-east; migrants in Istanbul (Halkalı), Ankara (Keçiören) and Izmir; Iranian Azeris in Istanbul and Van
Türkiye's Azeris live mainly on the Aras plain below Mount Ararat in Iğdır and on the high plateau of Kars and Ardahan, where their ancestors settled as the Russian and Persian empires redrew the Caucasus between the 1820s and the 1920s. Most are Twelver Shia, called Caferi in Türkiye, a rare Shia minority in a Sunni country, while their Karapapak (Terekeme) kin of Kars and Ardahan are largely Sunni. Since the late 1970s hundreds of thousands have moved west, and Istanbul's Halkalı district, with its 7,000-seat Zeynebiye mosque opened in 2025, is now their largest centre, where Muharram mourning processions fill the streets each year. Iranian Azerbaijani students, traders and refugees from Tabriz and Urmia add a newer layer in Istanbul and Van.
Read more- Population
- ~300,000-600,000
- Language
- Turkish
- Religion
- Islam - Sunni
- Location
- Eastern Black Sea coast of Rize and Artvin (Pazar, Ardeşen, Fındıklı, Arhavi, Hopa, Kemalpaşa, Borçka); post-1878 villages in Düzce, Sakarya, Kocaeli, Yalova, Bursa and Balıkesir; Istanbul, Ankara, Izmir, Bursa
The Laz are the indigenous people of Türkiye's far north-eastern Black Sea coast, descendants of ancient Colchis and the Christian kingdom of Lazica, who became Sunni Muslims under Ottoman rule. Their homeland is a narrow strip of steep, rain-soaked tea gardens between Pazar and Hopa in Rize and Artvin, and after 1878 many resettled in villages from Akçakoca to Sapanca in the Marmara region; today most live in Istanbul and other cities. Their language, Lazuri, is related to Georgian and unrelated to Turkish, yet almost no Laz under forty can speak it, and Turks loosely call everyone from the eastern Black Sea 'Laz'. Laz life is lived to the sound of the kemençe and bagpipe and the fast horon line dance, and the late singer Kâzım Koyuncu made Laz songs known across the country.
Read more- Population
- ~300,000-600,000
- Language
- Kirmanjki (individual language)
- Religion
- Islam - Alevi
- Location
- Tunceli (Dersim: Hozat, Ovacık, Pülümür, Nazımiye, Mazgirt, Tunceli town); Erzincan (Çayırlı, Tercan, Kemah, Erzincan centre); northern Bingöl (Kiğı, Adaklı, Yedisu, Karlıova); Varto (Muş); Hınıs and Tekman (Erzurum); Zara and İmranlı (Sivas); most now in Istanbul, Izmir, Ankara, Mersin, Antalya and Europe
The Northern Zazas are the Alevi branch of the Zaza people, speakers of Kırmancki, an Iranian language distinct from Kurdish, whose homeland is Dersim, today's Tunceli, the only province of Türkiye with an Alevi majority. Their faith, which they call Raa Haqi, the Path of Truth, joins love of Ali and the cem gathering with reverence for sacred mountains, springs and rivers: the Munzur river, the mountain of Düzgün Baba and dozens of other holy places are visited for vows, healing and sacrifice. Dersim's mountains kept them semi-independent until the army crushed the region in 1937-38, killing at least 13,000 people and deporting thousands more, and in 1994 security forces emptied over a thousand villages and hamlets. Today only about one in three people from Dersim still lives there, the rest in Istanbul, Izmir and Germany, and few children grow up speaking Kırmancki.
Read more- Population
- 250,000
- Language
- Turkish Sign Language
- Religion
- Islam - Sunni (family identity)
- Location
- Throughout Türkiye; largest communities in Istanbul, Ankara and Izmir
The Deaf of Türkiye are a community of roughly a quarter of a million people who use Turkish Sign Language, a language with its own grammar that grew up among children in schools for the deaf since the first one opened in Istanbul in 1902. Because sign language was banned from classrooms from 1953, generations learned it from each other, and many hearing families still cannot sign with their own children, so the 133 Deaf associations and their sports clubs, cafes and weddings are where most social life happens. The language was recognised in law in 2005, and Turkish Sign Language Day is kept each 7 June. In three remote villages of the Taurus mountains and in one Mardin family, hereditary deafness has produced separate small sign languages of their own.
Read more- Population
- ~150,000-300,000
- Language
- Kabardian
- Religion
- Islam - Sunni
- Location
- Uzunyayla plateau (Pınarbaşı and Sarız in Kayseri, Şarkışla and Kangal in Sivas); villages in Tokat, Samsun, Çorum, Düzce, Eskişehir and Balıkesir; most now in Kayseri, Ankara and Istanbul
The Kabardians are the eastern branch of the Circassians, driven from the North Caucasus by Russia's conquest in the 1860s and settled by the Ottomans on empty land across Anatolia. Their heartland is the Uzunyayla, a cold high plateau between Kayseri and Sivas with some sixty Circassian villages, where the Kabardian language held on longer than anywhere else in the country and still serves as the common tongue even for villages of other Circassian tribes. Uzunyayla was once famous for breeding horses for the Ottoman and Turkish cavalry, a way of life that ended with mechanisation after 1950 and sent families to the cities. Some 400,000 to a million Turks have Kabardian ancestors, but most speak only Turkish and count as Turks; about 150,000-300,000 still speak Kabardian and keep the identity. Most now live in Kayseri, Ankara and Istanbul and are Sunni Muslims, and associations keep alive Circassian dance, the Xabze code of honour and hospitality, and the memory of the 1864 exile.
Read more- Population
- ~150,000-300,000
- Language
- Bulgarian
- Religion
- Islam - Sunni
- Location
- Eastern Thrace (Edirne, Kırklareli, Tekirdağ), southern Marmara (Çanakkale, Balıkesir, Bursa, Bilecik), Izmir, Manisa, Sakarya, Eskişehir; Istanbul
The Pomaks of Türkiye are Slavic-speaking Muslims from the Rhodope Mountains of Bulgaria and Greece who came as refugees between the Russo-Ottoman War of 1877-78 and Bulgaria's expulsion of its Muslims in 1989. About 250 Pomak villages lie across Eastern Thrace and the southern Marmara, around Edirne, Kırklareli, Tekirdağ, Çanakkale, Balıkesir and Bursa, while many families have moved to Istanbul. Most now speak Turkish first and are counted as Turks, but the older generation and some villages, such as Şalgamlı near Tekirdağ, still speak Pomak, a dialect of Bulgarian. Before a wedding, Pomak women paint the bride's face white with sugar and egg white and cover it with sequins while singing laments, a custom meant to keep evil spirits away.
Read more- Population
- ~150,000-300,000 identifying
- Language
- Crimean Tatar
- Religion
- Islam - Sunni
- Location
- Eskişehir province (Alpu, Mahmudiye, Sivrihisar, Çifteler, Seyitgazi), Polatlı (Ankara), Konya (Sarayönü), Ankara, Istanbul, Bursa, Kocaeli; smaller groups in Adana (Ceyhan), Aksaray, Kırıkkale, Edirne and Tekirdağ
The Crimean Tatars are a Turkic Muslim people from the Crimean peninsula, whose ancestors fled to the Ottoman Empire in waves from Russia's annexation of Crimea in 1783 through the Crimean War and the 1870s, with a last small group arriving after Stalin's 1944 deportation of the whole nation. Their descendants in Türkiye number in the millions, but most now speak only Turkish and count themselves Turks; perhaps 150,000-300,000 still hold a Crimean Tatar identity, gathered in some 60-70 associations and in the farming villages their great-grandparents founded around Eskişehir, Polatlı and Konya. Elders still speak the Steppe dialect of Crimean Tatar at home, close enough to Turkish that the young drift into Turkish without noticing. Eskişehir is known across Türkiye for çiğbörek, the fried meat pastry the Tatars brought, and every spring the villages hold Tepreş festivals with kaytarma dances and belt wrestling.
Read more- Population
- ~150,000-200,000
- Language
- Western Armenian
- Religion
- Islam - Sunni
- Location
- Eastern Black Sea: Hemşin, Çamlıhemşin, Pazar, Çayeli and İkizdere districts of Rize; Hopa, Kemalpaşa and Borçka in Artvin; migrant communities in Sakarya, Düzce, Erzurum, Istanbul, Ankara and Izmir
The Hemshinli are a Sunni Muslim people of the steep, rain-soaked valleys behind the eastern Black Sea coast, descended from Armenians of the medieval principality of Hamshen who accepted Islam under Ottoman rule. Most, in the Hemşin and Çamlıhemşin districts of Rize, now speak only Turkish, but the Hopa Hemshinli near the Georgian border still speak Homshetsi, an endangered dialect of Western Armenian. Each summer whole villages still climb to high pastures (yayla) above 2,000 metres, where festivals with the tulum bagpipe and the horon line dance bring scattered families back together. Generations of Hemshinli men left to work as bakers and pastry makers in Russia and then in Turkey's cities, where many of the oldest patisseries were founded by Hemshinli families.
Read more- Population
- ~150,000 (est. 100,000-250,000)
- Language
- Domari
- Religion
- Islam - Sunni
- Location
- South-eastern Türkiye: Hatay, Şanlıurfa, Gaziantep, Kahramanmaraş, Malatya, Adıyaman, Diyarbakır (Bağlar-Yeniköy), Mardin, Batman, Siirt, Van and Hakkari; Syrian Dom refugees in Gaziantep, Şanlıurfa, Kilis and Hatay
The Dom are a people of Indian origin who have lived in Upper Mesopotamia for centuries, known to their neighbours in south-eastern Türkiye as Mıtrıp, Karaçi or simply Gypsies. For generations they were the davul-and-zurna musicians whose drums and shrill horns opened and closed every Kurdish and Arab village wedding, as well as tinsmiths, sieve makers and travelling dentists. Most now speak Kurdish, Arabic or Turkish, and only some keep their own Domari tongue, but they marry within the community and are kept at a distance by Kurds, Arabs and Turks alike. Since 2011 tens of thousands of Dom fleeing the Syrian war have joined them, and the 2023 earthquakes hit their poor neighbourhoods in Hatay, Adıyaman and Malatya hard, where many were turned away from official tent camps.
Read more- Population
- ~100,000-180,000
- Language
- Georgian
- Religion
- Islam - Sunni
- Location
- Artvin (Borçka, Şavşat-Imerkhevi, Yusufeli, Macahel); Chveneburi villages in Ordu, Samsun, Giresun, Amasya, Tokat, Sinop and in Sakarya, Bursa (İnegöl), Kocaeli, Düzce, Yalova, Balıkesir; Istanbul
Georgians have lived in north-eastern Anatolia for more than a thousand years, and the villages of the Imerkhevi and Machakhela valleys in Artvin, cut off from Georgia by the 1921 border, still speak their own Georgian dialects. Most Georgians in Türkiye, though, descend from Muslim refugees who left Adjara, Batumi and the surrounding highlands after the Russian conquests of 1829 and 1878 and settled in some 420 villages along the Black Sea coast and around the Sea of Marmara. They call themselves Chveneburi, "our people", are Sunni Muslims fully at home in Turkish society, and mostly speak Turkish today, with Georgian kept by the elderly and in songs. In villages such as Hayriye near İnegöl, choirs sing Georgian polyphonic songs to the chiboni bagpipe, and feasts are led by a tamada, the Georgian toastmaster. Since the 1990s they have been joined by tens of thousands of workers from Georgia, mostly Orthodox Christian women employed as carers and housekeepers in Istanbul.
Read more- Population
- 117,000
- Language
- Chechen
- Religion
- Islam - Sunni
- Location
- Villages in Kahramanmaraş (Göksun), Sivas, Muş, Kayseri (Uzunyayla), Adana (Ceyhan), Yozgat, Kars and Çanakkale; Istanbul and Ankara
Chechens in Türkiye descend mostly from Muslim refugees whom the Russian Empire drove out of the North Caucasus in the 1860s, and who were settled by the Ottomans in small farming villages on the Anatolian plateau, from Göksun in Kahramanmaraş and the hills of Sivas to Muş and the Uzunyayla highland of Kayseri. A second wave came as refugees from the two Chechen wars of 1994 to 2009, and Istanbul became a haven for exiles from Russia and from Ramzan Kadyrov's rule, where several were assassinated. Most now live in Istanbul and Ankara and speak Turkish first, while the Chechen language survives mainly among villagers and the elderly. Associations in Kahramanmaraş, Sivas, Adana, Ankara and Istanbul keep up Caucasian weddings, dances and dishes such as dumplings with garlic sauce and boiled meat.
Read more- Population
- ~70,000-150,000
- Language
- Tosk Albanian
- Religion
- Islam - Sunni
- Location
- Istanbul (Bayrampaşa, Küçükçekmece, Merdivenköy, Pendik, Kartal, Arnavutköy), Bursa, Sakarya, İzmir, Samsun, Tokat, Amasya, Eskişehir, Kocaeli and Thrace
Türkiye's Albanians descend from Muslim refugees and emigrants who left the Balkans between the 1870s and the 1960s, most of them Gheg speakers from Kosovo and North Macedonia who came in two great waves from Yugoslavia, in the interwar years and in 1953-1967. They settled in Istanbul, the Marmara region and villages of the Black Sea hinterland, and as Sunni Muslims they became part of Turkish society so fully that most of the more than a million people of Albanian descent now speak only Turkish. A smaller community keeps the language and an Albanian identity alive through associations in Istanbul's Bayrampaşa district, where the Kosovo Cultural Centre runs free evening Albanian classes for students aged ten to seventy-seven. Families still travel back to villages around Skopje, Kumanovo, Kačanik and Peja, and the fried liver dish known across the country as Arnavut ciğeri, 'Albanian liver', recalls their place in Turkish life.
Read more- Population
- ~100,000-120,000 (up to 2,000,000 of Bosniak descent)
- Language
- Bosnian
- Religion
- Islam - Sunni
- Location
- Marmara and Aegean regions: Istanbul (Bayrampaşa, Pendik, Kartal), Sakarya, Kocaeli (Karamürsel), Bursa, Yalova, Izmir (Kemalpaşa), Edirne and Kırklareli villages, Aydın
Türkiye's Bosniaks descend from the Slavic-speaking Muslims of Bosnia and the Sandžak who left as muhacir refugees after Austria-Hungary took Bosnia in 1878, in waves that went on until the 1970s, with more arriving during the 1992-1995 war. Perhaps two million Turks have some Bosniak ancestry, but most now speak only Turkish; a core of about a hundred thousand keeps the Bosniak name, Bosnian at home and dozens of hometown associations. Their villages in Thrace, Sakarya and around Izmir and their neighbourhoods in Istanbul's Bayrampaşa are known for pita, the coiled meat pie Turks call Boşnak böreği, and for sevdalinka, slow songs of longing. They are Sunni Muslims and fully at home in Turkish society, and since 2017 Bosnian has been taught as an elective subject in a few schools.
Read more- Population
- ~40,000-150,000
- Language
- Abkhazian
- Religion
- Christianity - Orthodox
- Location
- Some 228 villages, densest in Düzce and Sakarya, also Eskişehir, Bilecik, Bolu, Yozgat, Adana (Tufanbeyli), Zonguldak, Samsun, Sinop and İzmir; large urban communities in Istanbul, İzmit and Ankara
Türkiye holds the largest Abkhaz diaspora in the world: 200,000-500,000 Turks descend from Muslim Abkhaz expelled by Russia between 1864 and 1878 and settled by the Ottomans in about 228 villages, above all around Düzce and Sakarya, though only some 40,000-150,000 still keep an Abkhaz identity. They call themselves Apsua and their homeland Apsny, while Turks call them Abaza. Some dialects of Abkhaz, such as Sadz, now survive only in these Turkish villages, though most younger people speak only Turkish. Families still mark the Abkhaz New Year in January with a hearth ritual and serve guests abısta, a maize porridge eaten with cheese and the red pepper paste acıka. Many follow Abkhazia's politics closely and campaign for travel links and recognition of the breakaway republic.
Read more- Population
- ~60,000-90,000
- Language
- Armenian
- Religion
- Christianity - Armenian Apostolic
- Location
- Istanbul (almost all); Vakıflı village in Hatay; a few families in İskenderun, Diyarbakır, Kayseri and Ankara
The Armenians of Istanbul are the last organised remnant of a people who lived across Anatolia for some 2,500 years and numbered close to two million before the genocide of 1915-1923. Today about 50,000 to 70,000 Armenian citizens remain, almost all in Istanbul, around the Patriarchate in Kumkapı, in Kurtuluş, Feriköy, Şişli, Bakırköy and Yeşilköy, and on the Princes' Islands in summer; they are joined by thousands of women from the Republic of Armenia who work as carers and domestic staff. As one of three minorities recognised by the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne they run their own churches, 16 schools, two hospitals and the bilingual weekly Agos, whose editor Hrant Dink was murdered in 2007. Western Armenian, the language of the Ottoman Armenians, is spoken by a shrinking share of the young. In Hatay the village of Vakıflı, at the foot of Musa Dağ, is the only Armenian village left in the country, its church rebuilt after the 2023 earthquakes.
Read more- Population
- ~25,000-30,000
- Language
- Crimean Tatar
- Religion
- Islam - Sunni
- Location
- Istanbul and Ankara; smaller communities in Eskişehir (Osmaniye village, Çifteler), Izmir, Antalya, Kütahya, Manisa and Samsun
The Kazan (Volga) Tatars are a Turkic Muslim people from the middle Volga in Russia, heirs of Volga Bulgaria and the Kazan Khanate, who reached Türkiye in several waves: villagers fleeing forced Christianisation in the 1890s, political exiles after the 1917 revolution, Tatar merchants from Manchuria, Japan and Korea in the 1950s, and students, spouses and professionals since 1991. Up to 60,000 people in Türkiye are of Kazan Tatar descent, and some 25,000-30,000 of them keep the identity, mainly in Istanbul and Ankara, with smaller communities in Eskişehir, Izmir and Antalya, and one surviving village, Osmaniye in Eskişehir's Çifteler district. Tatar émigré scholars such as Yusuf Akçura, Sadri Maksudi Arsal and Reşit Rahmeti Arat helped shape modern Turkish nationalism and Turkology. Each June the community gathers at Osmaniye for Sabantuy, a harvest-sowing festival with wrestling, sack races and öçpoçmak triangle pies.
Read more- Population
- 22,000
- Language
- Karachay-Balkar
- Religion
- Islam
- Location
- Eskişehir (Han district), Konya, Afyonkarahisar (İscehisar, Bolvadin), Tokat, Ankara, Kayseri, Sivas and Yalova (Çiftlikköy); migrants in Istanbul, Ankara and Izmir
The Karachays are a Turkic-speaking mountain people from the slopes of Mount Elbrus in the North Caucasus, who came to the Ottoman Empire in two waves in 1884-1887 and 1905-1906 to escape Russian rule. About 20,000-30,000 of their descendants live in Türkiye, in a dozen villages on the central Anatolian plateau around Eskişehir, Afyonkarahisar, Konya and Tokat and increasingly in the big cities. Their language is close enough to Turkish to be learned easily, yet their dances, accordion music, dress and wedding customs are Caucasian, and they count themselves among the Caucasian peoples beside the Circassians. In Türkiye they call themselves Karachay-Malkar, joining the name of their Balkar kin whom Soviet borders separated from them.
Read more- Population
- ~20,000 (est. 15,000-25,000)
- Language
- Turoyo
- Religion
- Christianity - Syriac Orthodox
- Location
- Istanbul (Yeşilköy, Bakırköy, Beyoğlu-Tarlabaşı), and the Tur Abdin plateau of Mardin and Şırnak provinces (Midyat, Mardin city, Nusaybin, İdil and villages), with small communities in Adıyaman, Diyarbakır and Ankara
The Suryoye, or Syriacs, are the Aramaic-speaking Christians of the Tur Abdin, a limestone plateau around Midyat in south-eastern Türkiye, where their monasteries of Mor Gabriel (397) and Deyrulzafaran have stood for over sixteen centuries. They speak Turoyo, a living form of the Aramaic of Jesus' time, and worship in Classical Syriac in the Syriac Orthodox Church. Massacres in 1915, and village evacuations and killings during the Kurdish conflict of the 1980s and 1990s, emptied most of their villages: today most of the community lives in Istanbul, where it opened Türkiye's first new church of the Republican era at Yeşilköy in 2023, while three to five thousand remain in Tur Abdin. Since the 2010s some families have come back from Germany, Switzerland and Sweden to rebuild stone houses and restore churches in villages such as Ayn Wardo and Midin.
Read more- Population
- ~13,000-14,000
- Language
- Turkish
- Religion
- Judaism
- Location
- Istanbul (over 95%: Şişli, Nişantaşı, Ulus, Levent, Kadıköy-Caddebostan, Büyükada in summer); Izmir; a few families in Ankara, Bursa, Adana, Çanakkale and Kırklareli
Türkiye's Sephardic Jews descend from the Jews expelled from Spain in 1492 and Portugal in 1497, whom the Ottoman sultan Bayezid II welcomed to Istanbul, Izmir, Edirne and Salonika. Once some 80,000 strong, the community has shrunk through emigration to Israel and the West to about 13,000-14,000 people, nearly all in Istanbul, with about a thousand in Izmir. They speak Turkish, while their medieval Spanish-based language, Ladino, survives among the elderly and in El Amaneser, the world's only monthly newspaper written entirely in Ladino. Their community life centres on Istanbul's 26 active synagogues, including Neve Shalom in Galata, a Jewish school in Ulus and the Or-Ahayim hospital, all kept under tight security since synagogue bombings in 1986, 1992 and 2003.
Read more- Population
- ~13,000 (12,000-15,000)
- Language
- Arabic, Levantine
- Religion
- Christianity
- Location
- Hatay (Antakya, İskenderun, Samandağ, Altınözü, Arsuz), Mersin and Istanbul
The Antiochian Orthodox of Hatay are Arabic-speaking Christians whose families have worshipped in Antioch since the first centuries of the church; their province belonged to Syria until 1939, and their churches still answer to the Greek Orthodox Patriarch of Antioch in Damascus. Roughly 13,000 remain in Türkiye, in Antakya, İskenderun, Samandağ, the villages of Altınözü and the seaside town of Arsuz, with growing branches in Mersin and Istanbul and a larger diaspora in Germany and South America. They call themselves Rum (Orthodox) rather than Arabs, speak Levantine Arabic at home and Turkish in public, and share neighbourhoods and close friendships with Hatay's Arab Alawites. The February 2023 earthquakes killed 62 of them, flattened the Church of Saints Peter and Paul in Antakya and the Virgin Mary church in Samandağ, and left fewer than 90 of some 350 families in central Antakya. Their Christmas Eve service, held in the rock-cut cave church of Saint Peter outside the city, has become a symbol of the community's will to return.
Read more- Population
- 10,000
- Language
- Balkan Gagauz Turkish
- Religion
- Islam - Sunni
- Location
- Taurus mountains and Mediterranean coast (Mersin, Antalya, Konya), Aegean uplands (Aydın, Manisa), and Balkan Yörük descendants in Thrace (Edirne)
The Yörüks are the descendants of the Turkmen herding tribes who for centuries moved their flocks between the warm Mediterranean and Aegean coasts in winter and the high Taurus pastures in summer; their name comes from the Turkish verb 'to walk'. Most have settled in villages and speak ordinary Turkish, but many still go up to the summer pastures, and about 200 Sarıkeçili families remain fully nomadic, trekking for twenty days with tens of thousands of goats and sheep, some still loading camels, between Silifke and the Konya highlands. They live in black tents woven by the women from goat hair, and their flat-weave kilims, saddlebags and throat-sung songs are prized parts of Turkish folk heritage. Shrinking pastures, dams across old routes and young people leaving for the towns are bringing the migrating way of life close to its end.
Read more- Population
- ~5,000-10,000
- Language
- Persian (Iran); Arabic, Kurdish and Turkish in Iraq, Jordan and Türkiye
- Religion
- Baha'i Faith
- Location
- Istanbul, Ankara, Izmir, Edirne, Adana and smaller towns; Iranian Baha'i asylum seekers in assigned satellite cities such as Ordu and Kayseri
Türkiye's Baha'is are a small religious community, most of them Turkish citizens from Muslim families, joined by Iranian Baha'is who have fled persecution at home. The faith has deep roots here: the Ottomans exiled its founder, Baha'u'llah, to Istanbul in 1863 and then to Edirne, where he lived until 1868, and his restored house near Edirne's Selimiye Mosque is now a place of pilgrimage. The community has elected a national assembly since 1959 and meets in homes in dozens of towns for prayer, study and the Nineteen-Day Feast. Because the state does not recognise the faith, Baha'is cannot record their religion on identity cards or register as a religious body.
Read more- Population
- ~3,000-10,000
- Language
- Pontic
- Religion
- Islam - Sunni
- Location
- Valleys of Trabzon province (Of, Çaykara, Dernekpazarı, Köprübaşı, Sürmene, Tonya, Maçka), western İkizdere (Rize); migrant families in Istanbul
The Romeyka speakers of Trabzon are Muslim descendants of the Greek-speaking Christians of the Pontus, the Black Sea coast ruled from Trebizond until 1461, who became Muslims between the 17th and 19th centuries and so stayed when the Christian Pontic Greeks were sent to Greece in 1923. In the steep valleys of Of, Çaykara, Sürmene and Tonya, among hazelnut and tea gardens, older villagers still speak Romeyka, an unwritten Greek variety that keeps an infinitive lost from every other form of modern Greek. They are devout Sunni Muslims who call themselves Turks, and many are reluctant to speak Romeyka in public. Fewer than ten thousand still speak it, most of them over 65, and children are no longer learning it.
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- ~3,500 (3,000-4,500)
- Language
- Modern Greek (1453-)
- Religion
- Christianity - Eastern Orthodox
- Location
- Istanbul (Fener/Phanar, Beyoğlu, Kurtuluş, Bakırköy, Princes' Islands, Bosphorus villages); Gökçeada (Imbros); Bozcaada (Tenedos)
The Rum, or Romioi, are the last of the Greek Orthodox Christians who lived in Constantinople since Byzantine times and were spared the 1923 population exchange along with the islanders of Imbros and Tenedos. Over a hundred thousand in the 1920s, they were driven out by the 1942 wealth tax, the 1955 pogrom and the 1964 expulsions, and fewer than 2,500 remain in Istanbul today, most of them elderly, with about a thousand younger newcomers from Greece who came for work after the Greek debt crisis. They cluster around the Ecumenical Patriarchate in the Phanar, the spiritual centre of the world's Orthodox Christians, and keep three Greek schools, dozens of churches and two Greek-language newspapers. On Imbros, emptied in the 1960s and 1970s, a reopened Greek school has drawn several hundred people back, and every 15 August the island's villages fill for the feast of the Virgin, led by Patriarch Bartholomew, who was born there.
Read more- Population
- ~1,000-3,000
- Language
- Iron Ossetic
- Religion
- Islam - Sunni
- Location
- Istanbul and Ankara; three villages in Yozgat (Poyrazlı, Boyalık, Karabacak); descendants in Sivas, Kayseri and other central Anatolian towns
Ossetians in Türkiye descend from Muslim families who left the Russian Caucasus in the early 1860s and settled first around Sarıkamış in the far east, then in dozens of villages across central Anatolia. Unlike the mostly Orthodox Christian Ossetians of their homeland, they are Sunni Muslims, and Turks count them among the Circassians, though their language is Iranian, related to Persian and Kurdish, not Caucasian. Only three villages in Yozgat province still speak it, Poyrazlı in the Digor dialect and Boyalık and Karabacak in Iron, and the 40,000-60,000 descendants have mostly moved to Istanbul and Ankara, speak only Turkish and count as Turks; only a few thousand still keep an Ossetian identity. Each August the villages hold a reunion where the three stacked Ossetian pies are baked, and a foundation in Istanbul keeps up dances, language classes and close ties with North Ossetia.
Read more- Population
- 1,500
- Language
- Turkish
- Religion
- Judaism
- Location
- Istanbul: Galata and Karaköy (Ashkenazi synagogue), Hasköy (Karaite synagogue), Şişli; formerly Antakya and İskenderun
Beside its Sephardic majority, Türkiye has a few hundred Jews of other traditions, almost all in Istanbul. Ashkenazim from Austria, Russia and Eastern Europe once numbered about 10,000 and now gather at the Yüksekkaldırım synagogue near the Galata Tower, built by Austrian Jews in 1900 and the last Ashkenazi synagogue still in use. In Hasköy on the Golden Horn a few dozen Karaites, a Jewish tradition that rejects the rabbinic law, pray in a small wooden synagogue sunk below street level, with carpets in place of pews. All of them speak Turkish and are steadily marrying into the Sephardic majority or emigrating, and the ancient Arabic-speaking Jewish community of Antakya came to an end in the 2023 earthquake.
Read more- Population
- ~600-2,000
- Language
- Northern Kurdish
- Religion
- Yazidism
- Location
- Tur Abdin and Batman villages: Midyat (Güven/Bacin), Nusaybin, Beşiri (Batman), İdil (Mağara/Kiwex, Şırnak), Viranşehir (Burç, Şanlıurfa); Iraqi refugees scattered in cities
The Yazidis of Türkiye are the remnant of an ancient Kurmanji-speaking people who followed their own faith, centred on the Peacock Angel and the shrine of Lalish in Iraq, in the villages of Tur Abdin, Batman and Viranşehir for centuries. Some 60,000 lived here in the 1980s, but massacres in earlier centuries, pressure to convert, land seizures by neighbouring tribes and the Kurdish war of the 1990s drove almost all of them to Germany, so that only a few hundred remain. Since about 2013 some families have come back from Germany, France and Belgium to rebuild their villages, putting up new villas beside the old stone temples of Bacin near Midyat and Kiwex near İdil. Thousands of Iraqi Yazidis fled to Türkiye from the Islamic State's 2014 genocide in Sinjar, but most have since moved on to Europe or returned.
Read more- Population
- ~500-1,000
- Language
- Bulgarian
- Religion
- Christianity - Bulgarian Orthodox
- Location
- Istanbul (Kadıköy, Şişli, Levent, Etiler, Maslak; churches in Balat and Feriköy), Edirne
The Bulgarians of Istanbul, who call the city Tsarigrad, are the last few hundred Orthodox Christians of a community that numbered tens of thousands in Ottoman times, when Istanbul was the centre of the Bulgarian national revival and the seat of the Bulgarian Exarchate. They worship at St Stephen on the Golden Horn, a church cast entirely in iron and assembled in 1898, and keep a weekend Bulgarian school, a cemetery chapel in Feriköy and, in the border city of Edirne, the restored church of St George, where descendants of Thracian Bulgarians expelled in 1913 gather each May. They speak Bulgarian at home and Turkish outside, and they are separate from the far larger Turkish-speaking Bulgarian Turks and Muslim Pomaks who came from Bulgaria. Ageing, emigration and mixed marriages have left a community of about 500 that struggles to pass on its language.
Read more- Population
- ~60-63 million
- Language
- Turkish
- Religion
- Islam - Sunni
- Location
- Throughout Türkiye; majority in every region except the Kurdish-majority south-east and east
Turks are the Turkish-speaking majority of Türkiye, descended from the Oghuz Turkic tribes who entered Anatolia after the Seljuk victory at Manzikert in 1071 and from the Greek, Armenian, Balkan and Caucasian peoples who joined them over nine centuries. They make up about three-quarters of the country's 86 million people, from Istanbul's megacity to Black Sea tea villages and the wheat plains of central Anatolia. Most are Sunni Muslims of the Hanafi school, served by state-appointed imams, yet daily life mixes mosque prayer with visits to saints' tombs, blue nazar beads against the evil eye and a growing secular streak among the young. Family life turns on hospitality: guests are pressed with glass after glass of black tea, and weddings run over several days, opening with the bride's henna night.
Read more- Population
- ~5 million (est. 4-8 million)
- Language
- Turkish
- Religion
- Islam
- Location
- Central and north-central Anatolia (Sivas, Tokat, Çorum, Amasya, Yozgat, Kırşehir, Nevşehir, Malatya, Erzincan), Tahtacı villages of the Taurus and Aegean mountains, and the big cities, above all Istanbul, Ankara and Izmir
Turkish Alevis are Turkish-speaking descendants of the Turkmen tribes who embraced a mystical devotion to Ali and the Twelve Imams and sided with the Safavid Kızılbaş against the Ottomans, for which they were persecuted for centuries. They do not pray in mosques or keep the Ramadan fast; instead they gather in cemevis where men and women worship together, led by a hereditary dede, with hymns sung to the long-necked bağlama and the whirling semah dance. Their villages lie across the central Anatolian belt from Çorum to Erzincan, but most now live in the working-class districts of Istanbul, Ankara and Izmir. Memories of massacres, from Maraş in 1978 to the burning of the Madımak Hotel in Sivas in 1993, keep them firmly secular and wary of the Sunni majority, and marriage across the line is still often resisted on both sides.
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