Turkey’s population reaches 82 million

ANKARA

Turkey’s population hit 82 million as of the end of 2018, the Turkish Statistical Institute (TÜİK) said on Feb. 1.

Official figures revealed that the population residing in Turkey increased by 1,193,357 people year-on-year.

“Male population was 41,139,980 people and female population was 40,863,902 people. While 50.2 percent of the total population were males, 49.8 percent of the total population were females,” TÜİK said.

Fresh data also showed that annual population growth rate increased to 1.47 percent in 2018 from 1.24 percent in 2017.

The proportion of population residing in province and district centers decreased to 92.3 percent in 2018 from 92.5 percent in 2017, TÜİK’s report said. The proportion of population living in towns and villages was 7.7 percent.

Istanbul’s population over 15 million

The most populated province was Istanbul with 15,067,724 inhabitants, constituting 18.4 percent of Turkey’s population. This province was followed by the capital Ankara with 5,503,985 inhabitants, the Aegean province of İzmir with 4,320,519 inhabitants, the western province of Bursa with 2,994,521 inhabitants and the southern province of Antalya with 2,426,356 inhabitants, respectively.

The least populated province was the northeastern province of Bayburt with 82,274 inhabitants.

Population in working age group increases

The population rate in the 15-64 working age group increased by 1.4 percent compared to the previous year. Accordingly, the proportion of working age group became 67.8 percent; the proportion of children aged 0-14 became 23.4 percent and the proportion of population aged 65 and over became 8.8 percent in 2018.

The population density, which is the number of persons per square kilometer, increased by 2 persons compared to 2017 and reached 107 in 2018.

The province with the highest number of persons per square kilometer was Istanbul with 2,900 persons. This province was followed by Kocaeli with 528 persons and İzmir with 360 persons. The eastern province of Tunceli had the smallest population density, the same as the past year with 12 persons per square kilometer.

The population density of the Central Anatolian province of Konya, which has the largest surface area, was 57 and the population density of the northwestern province of Yalova, which has the smallest surface area, was 310.

The next release of the population count will be in February 2020, TÜİK said.