Minorities in Turkey form a substantial part of the country's population, representing an estimated 25 to 28 percent of the population. Historically, in the Ottoman Empire, Islam was the official and dominant religion, with Muslims having more rights than non-Muslims, whose rights were restricted. Non-Muslim (dhimmi) ethno-religious groups were legally identified by different millet ("nations").
Following the end of World War I and the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire, all Ottoman Muslims were made part of the modern citizenry or the Turkish nation as the newly founded Republic of Turkey was constituted as a Muslim nation state. While Turkish nationalist policy viewed all Muslims in Turkey as Turks without exception, non-Muslim minority groups, such as Jews and Christians, were designated as "foreign nations" (dhimmi). Conversely, Turk (term for Muslims) was used to denote all groups in the region who had been Islamized under Ottoman rule, especially Muslim Albanians and Slavic Muslims.
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". Bulgarians are also an officially recognized minority by the Turkey-Bulgaria Friendship Treaty () of 18 October 1925 but in the present day there are only a few hundred Bulgarians in Turkey. On 18 June 2013, the Ankara 13th Circuit Administrative Court unanimously ruled that the Assyrians were included as beneficiaries of the Lausanne Treaty, so that Assyrians were allowed to open the first school teaching in their mother tongue.
The amount of ethnic minorities is considered to be underestimated by the Turkish government. Therefore, the exact number of members of ethnic groups who are Muslim is unknown; these include Arabs, Albanians, Bosniaks, Circassians, Georgians, Chechens, Abkhazians, Crimean Tatars, Laz, Hemshin Armenians, Kurds, Pomaks, Turkish Roma, and Pontic Greeks, among other smaller groups like Dom, Lom, Vallahades, Greek Muslims, Cretan Muslims, Nantinets. Many of the non-Turkish Muslim minorities are descendants of Muslims (muhajirs) who were expelled from the lands lost by the shrinking Ottoman Empire, like the Balkans and Caucasus Mountains. The majority have assimilated into and intermarried with the majority Turkish population and have adopted the Turkish language and way of life, though do not necessarily identify as Turks, especially the Pomaks. Turkification and often aggressive Turkish nationalist policies strengthen these trends.
Tables + Distribution of nationalities in Anatolia Ottoman official statistics, 1910 Sanjak Turks Greeks Armenians Jews Others Total Istanbul (Asiatic shore) 135,681 70,906 30,465 5,120 16,812 258,984 İzmit 184,960 78,564 50,935 2,180 1,435 318,074 Aydin (İzmir) 974,225 629,002 17,247 24,361 58,076 1,702,911 Bursa 1,346,387 274,530 87,932 2,788 6,125 1,717,762 Konya 1,143,335 85,320 9,426 720 15,356 1,254,157 Ankara 991,666 54,280 101,388 901 12,329 1,160,564 Trabzon 1,047,889 351,104 45,094 - - 1,444,087 Sivas 933,572 98,270 165,741 - - 1,197,583 Kastamonu 1,086,420 18,160 3,061 - 1,980 1,109,621 Adana 212,454 88,010 81,250 – 107,240 488,954 Canakkale 136,000 29,000 2,000 3,300 98 170,398 Total 8,192,589 1,777,146 594,539 39,370 219,451 10,823,095 Percentage 75.7% 16.42% 5.50% 0.36% 2.03% Ecumenical Patriarchate statistics, 1912 Total 7,048,662 1,788,582 608,707 37,523 218,102 9,695,506 Percentage 72.7% 18.45% 6.28% 0.39% 2.25% + Distribution of nationalities in East Thrace Ottoman official statistics, 1910 Sanjak Turks Greeks Bulgarians Others Total Edirne 128,000 113,500 31,500 14,700 287,700 Kirk Kilisse 53,000 77,000 28,500 1,150 159,650 Tekirdağ 63,500 56,000 3,000 21,800 144,300 Gallipoli 31,500 70,500 2,000 3,200 107,200 Çatalca 18,000 48,500 – 2,340 68,840 Istanbul 450,000 260,000 6,000 130,000 846,000 Total 744,000 625,500 71,000 173,190 1,613,690 Percentage 46.11% 38.76% 4.40% 10.74% Ecumenical Patriarchate statistics, 1912 Total 604,500 655,600 71,800 337,600 1,669,500 Percentage 36.20% 39.27% 4.30% 20.22% + Muslim and non-Muslim population in Turkey, 1914–2005 (in thousands)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. Year 1914 1927 1945 1965 1990 2005 Muslims 12,941 13,290 18,511 31,139 56,860 71,997 Greeks 1,549 110 104 76 8 3 Armenians 1,204 77 60 64 67 50 Jews 128 82 77 38 29 27 Others 176 71 38 74 50 45 Total 15,997 13,630 18,790 31,391 57,005 72,120 Percentage non-Muslim 19.1 2.5 1.5 0.8 0.3 0.2
Ethnic minorities Abdal
Groups of nomadic and semi-nomadic itinerants found mainly in central and western Anatolia. They speak an argot of their own and are Alevis.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)
Afghans
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. Most of them were spread out over satellite cities with Van and Ağrı being the most specific locations. 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. As of January 2010, Afghans consisted one-sixth of the 26,000 remaining refugees and asylum seekers. By the end 2011, their numbers are expected to surge up to 10,000, making them the largest population and surpass other groups.
Africans
Beginning several centuries ago, a number of Africans, usually via Zanzibar as Zanj and from places such as Niger, Saudi Arabia, Libya, Kenya and Sudan, came to the Ottoman Empire settled by the Dalaman, Menderes and Gediz valleys, Manavgat, and Çukurova. African quarters of 19th-century İzmir, including Sabırtaşı, Dolapkuyu, Tamaşalık, İkiçeşmelik, and Ballıkuyu, are mentioned in contemporary records. Due to the slave trade in the Ottoman Empire that had flourished in the Balkans, the coastal town of Ulcinj in Montenegro had its own black community. As a consequence of the slave trade and privateer activity, it is told how until 1878 in Ulcinj 100 black people lived. The Ottoman Army also deployed an estimated 30,000 Black African troops and cavalrymen to its expedition in Hungary during the Austro-Turkish War of 1716–18.Dieudonne Gnammankou, "African Slave Trade in Russia", in La Channe et le lien, Doudou Diene, (id.) Paris, Editions UNESCO, 1988.
Albanians
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.
However, these assumptions of the Turkish government are contested by many scholars who claim they are without any basis.
Arabs
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.
However, including recent Syrian refugees, they make up to 5.3% of the population. Most of them are Sunni Muslims. However, there is a small group of Alawis, and another one of Arab Christians (mostly in Hatay Province) in communion with the Antiochian Orthodox Church.
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, with around 50,000 to 460,000 Iraqis entering the country.
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, and consists mainly of refugees of the Syrian Civil War.
Armenians
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.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) 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.history.com/books/Arm-pop-Ottoman-Emp.pdf THE POPULATION OF THE OTTOMAN ARMENIANS by Justin McCarthy Raymond H. Kevorkian and Paul B. Paboudjian, Les Arméniens dans l'Empire Ottoman à la vielle du génocide, Ed. ARHIS, Paris, 1992 The Armenian community of the Ottoman Empire before the Armenian genocide had an estimated 2,300 churches and 700 schools (with 82,000 students). 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. After the Armenian genocide however, it is estimated that 200,000 Armenians remained in Turkey. Today there are an estimated 40,000 to 70,000 Armenians in Turkey, not including the Hamshenis.
During the Turkish Republican era, Armenians were subjected to many policies which were designed to abolish Armenian cultural heritage such as the Turkification of last names, Islamification, geographical name changes, confiscation of properties, change of animal names, changes of the names of Armenian historical figures (i.e. the name of the prominent Balyan family were concealed under an identity of a superficial Italian family called Baliani), and the change and distortion of Armenian historical events.
Today, the Armenians are mostly concentrated around Istanbul. The Armenians support their own newspapers and schools. The majority belong to the Armenian Apostolic faith, with much smaller numbers of Armenian Catholics and Armenian Evangelicals. The community currently functions 34, 18 schools, and 2 hospitals.
Assyrians