5 million Turks living outside of Turkey: Foreign Ministry

Umut Erdem – ANKARA

A Turkish market in German capital Berlin.

The Turkish Foreign Ministry has announced that five million Turkish nationals were residing in a total of 152 countries worldwide.

The announcement came upon the submission of a parliamentary motion by main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) lawmaker Sezgin Tanrıkulu demanding to know how many Turks were living abroad.

The ministry said the most number of Turkish nationals were living in Germany, with 2 million. But the number of people of Turkish-origin in Germany is actually higher than 2 million, with reports estimating it to be at some 3 million. Turks form the largest ethnic minority in Germany.

Germany was followed by France with 700,000, the Netherlands with 500,000, the U.S. with 300,000, Belgium with 240,000, Austria with 250,000, Australia with 150,000, Switzerland with 130,000, Denmark with 75,000, and Canada with 70,000.

No Turkish national was reported to be residing in the tiny and remote Kingdom of Bhutan nestling in the Himalayas, the Kingdom of Tonga in the South Pacific Ocean, and Tuvalu in the South Pacific Ocean, which is an island nation within the British Commonwealth.

The Foreign Ministry has also said there is no data regarding the number of Turkish nationals in Armenia, Paraguay, Equatorial Guinea, El Salvador, Nigeria, Bolivia, Syria, Monaco, North Korea, Liberia, Belize, Whales, Iceland, Canary Islands, Northern Ireland, Jamaica, Honduras, Greek Cyprus, Barbados, Andorra, Taiwan, Togo, and Uruguay.