Study shows one in five Turks reside in Istanbul

ANKARA - Hürriyet Daily News

18.2 percent of Turkey’s entire population, or more than 13.5 million live in Istanbul, the survey shows. The city also leads the list with respect to the rate of urbanization, as 99 percent of the province’s population lives in urban settings.

Residents in Istanbul province make up 18.2 percent of Turkey’s entire population, or more than 13.5 million people, according to a recent annual demographic survey conducted by the Turkish Statistical Institute (TÜİK).

The study also revealed an increase of about 1 million people in Turkey’s overall population that has now swelled to more than 74,724,000 people. That jump corresponds to an annual population growth rate of 1.35 percent.

Males account for 50.2 percent of the overall population, while the remaining 49.8 percent consists of females, according to the survey.

Ankara, the country’s second most populous province, contains about 6.6 percent of the general population with almost 4 million people. The Aegean province of İzmir and the northwest province of Bursa tailgated closely behind in the survey, with 5.3 percent and 3.6 percent of the population living in those provinces, respectively.

While more than 57 million people, or 76.8 percent of the country’s population, reside in urban and district centers, while the remaining 23.2 percent lives in smaller rural settlements, according to TÜİK’s findings.

Istanbul led the list with respect to the rate of urbanization, as 99 percent of the province’s population lives in urban settings, while the eastern province of Ardahan had the lowest urbanization rate with 35 percent.

The median age in Turkey stands at 29.7 years; while 67.4 percent of the population is between the ages of 15 and 64, another 25.3 percent ranging between the ages of zero and 14, said the survey.

TÜİK said there were an average of 97 inhabitants per each square kilometer on average, and Istanbul also topped the list in terms of population density with 2,622 people per square kilometer. The eastern province of Tunceli, on the other hand, had the lowest population density with 11 people per square kilometer.

The basis for the study was the Interior Ministry’s Adress-Based Population Registry System, as well as on institutional records from such establishments as barracks, prisons and university dorms as of Dec. 31, 2011.