Turkey Cultural Groups

Population
Historically Turkey had several significant minorities, particularly the Armenians, Greeks and Kurds. In the 1870s, the area of modern Turkey had about 800,000, or 7%, Christians (chiefly Armenians and Greeks). In the 1920s population exchanges with Greece and the expulsion and massacre of Armenians changed the composition of the population. There are almost no Greeks left in Turkey and Armenians are few.

The only significant minority are the Muslim Kurds who constitute about 17% of the total population. The Kurds are an Indo-European people related to the Persians. They are concentrated in the east and southeast parts of Turkey where the population is over 70% Kurdish.