Turkey
- Capital:
- Ankara
- Continent:
- Asia
- Region(s):
- Western Asia, The Middle East
- Abbreviation:
- TUR
* As of 1/8/2026
1 birth
Every 30.2 seconds
1 death
Every 55.8 seconds
1 emigrant
Every 2.4 minutes
1 person
Every 2.0 minutes
587K
750K
1M
2.5M
5M
7.5M
10M
16.4M
Turkey is officially known as the Republic of Turkey. It is a transcontinental country that includes Anatolia in western Asia and East Thrace in southern Europe. It is bordered by eight countries. Along its northwest border lies Bulgaria, towards its west is Greece, and to its northeast is Georgia. Three countries border the eastern side of Turkey, namely Azerbaijani exclave of Nakhchivan, Iran and Armenia. On the southeast border lie Syria and Iraq, and finally the Aegean Sea and the Mediterranean Sea share its southern border.
The population continues to increase at a steady rate with almost 3600 births every day, while the death rate compared to this is significantly low at 1224 deaths per day. This implies a net steady increase in Turkey’s population – and it has increased by more than 150 percent over the years.
The population is mainly comprised of the Turkish people, who make up 75% of the total population, while Kurdish make up 18%. Other ethnic groups make up the remaining 7% of the total population. The languages spoken by the majority are Turkish and Kurdish, while minority groups speak other languages.
The main religion, followed by 99.8% of the population, is Islam, while other religions are followed by the minute .02% of the population.
The literacy rate of the population is fairly high - about 95.6% overall as of 2018. The male literacy rate is almost 98%, while the female literacy rate is almost 92%. Almost 70% of the total population live in urban areas. The rate of urbanization is 1.7% per year. The total fertility rate is around 2.13 children born/woman.
Turkish (70%)
Kurdish (19%)
Other minorities (7%)
The main religion in Turkey is Muslim.
Muslim
Other
The population is fairly young with almost 27% ranging from 0 to 14 years of age, while 67% are 15 to 64 years old. Only around 6% are above 64 years of age. The median age of the population is at 30.9 years of age, with a total life expectancy of 75 years of age in 2018.
Life expectancy in Turkey has also grown from an average of 48.27 years in 1960 to 73.94 years in 2011. After the year 1970, life expectancy statistics show a steeper slope in its rate increase.
There are a number of indicators that help statisticians evaluate the quality of life in any given country, and Turkey gives some interesting numbers. While there are some troublesome trends include rising unemployment and inflation, the World Happiness report shows a ranking of 74 worldwide with a rating of 5.4 in overall happiness. Some additional factors to consider in this rating might include the lack of HIV in the area, as well as 100% of the population having access to improved drinking water and a low percentage of the population struggling with access to improved sanitation facilities (only 5.1% struggle with this aspect). Physician density is at 1.75 per 1,000 residents and hospital bed density comes in at 2.7 per 1,000 individuals.
In 1960, Turkey had a total population of 28.16 million people, and this number continues to gradually increase. In 1970, its population reached 35.46 million, and in 1980, it increased even more to become 44.11 million. In 1990, it rose to 54.13 million and then increased to 63.63 million by the year 2000.