Turkey’s population hits new high, over 80 million: TÜIK

ANKARA

Turkey’s population has shot past the 80 million mark to reach its highest level ever, the country’s statistical authority stated on Feb. 1.

At the end of 2017, the country’s population stood at 80.8 million, with an annual growth rate of 1.24 percent, the Turkish Statistical Institute (TÜİK) said.

Official data showed that the population living in Turkey rose by nearly one million, up from the previous year’s figure of 79.8 million.

Turkey’s male population was 40.5 million (50.2 percent of the total), while its female population was 40.3 million (49.8 percent), according to the state’s address-based population registration system.

The institute said 92.5 percent of Turkey’s population live in cities and district centers – up 0.2 percentage points – versus 7.5 percent in towns and villages.

Last year, Istanbul was Turkey’s most populous city with 15 million people, accounting for 18.6 percent of the total population. The country’s next most populous was capital Ankara, with nearly 5.5 million people, followed by the Aegean province of İzmir, with around 4.3 million.

Bursa, a prominent industrial center, was the fourth-biggest province by population with over 2.9 million, while the Mediterranean province of Antalya came fifth with more than 2.3 million people.

Turkey’s least populous province was Bayburt in the remote northeast, which had just 80,400 inhabitants. Bayburt was followed by the eastern city of Tunceli (82,500 residents) and the northeastern city of Ardahan (97,100 residents).

The TÜİK also stated that Turkey’s working age population (15-64 years) rose 1.2 percent last year to 67.9 percent (nearly 55 million people) of the total population, while the population of under-15s was 23.6 percent and the proportion of the population aged 65 and over was 8.5 percent.

Population density, calculated by measuring the number of people per square kilometer, increased by one compared to the previous year, reaching 105 in 2017. The province with the highest number of people per square kilometer was Istanbul with 2,892. Istanbul was followed by Kocaeli with 521 people per square kilometer and İzmir with 356.

Tunceli had the lowest population density, with just 11 people per square kilometer, as was also the case in the previous year.The population density of Konya, which is the province with the largest surface area in Turkey, was 56, while the population density of Yalova, which has the smallest surface area, was 297.