The New Geographies of Foreign Population in Turkey

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In this article, a geographic analysis of foreign population in Turkey presented. Based on the data from General Population Census and the national Address-based Population Registration System, it aims at outlining the temporal and spatial change of the foreigner in Turkey. Foreign population in this study refers to the people who officially reside in Turkey without Turkish citizenship. Due to the lack of long term, regular and coherent statistical data, it is rather hard to portray the spatio-temporal development of foreign population in Turkey. The paper presents the development of the foreign population in Turkey in different periods. Relatively detailed statistical data available after the year 2008 allowed us to perform spatial analysis. Both emigration and immigration flows with diverse motives resulted in the considerable decline in the amount of the foreign population during the first decades of the Turkish Republic however a striking increase especially with the 1980s. Istanbul and the other two big cities of Turkey, Ankara and Izmir, were the major cities where the foreign population primarily intensified until 1950s. With the 1980s, there was an expansion towards the Mediterranean and Aegean coastal zone, so called the Turkish Riviera. Besides the concentration in the big cities and coastal zones, there has been a growing expansion towards the continental provinces and districts during 2000s. Diverse spatial patterns at different geographical scales are observed in the way how the foreign population is distributed across Turkey. There is an increasing diversification of origin countries. The unignorably increasing visibility of the foreign population in Turkish society through immigration flows and related social challenges require the development of peaceful co-existence policies.

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Foreigner , foreign population , citizenship , spatial distribution , Turkey

Aegean Geographical Journal

164

Aegean Geographical Journal