Turkish communities in the former Ottoman Empire
Open-knowledge reference entry
The Turkish communities in the former Ottoman Empire refers to ethnic Turks, who are the descendants of Ottoman-Turkish settlers from Anatolia and Eastern Thrace, living outside of the modern borders of the Republic of Turkey and in the independent states which were formerly part of the Ottoman Empire. Thus, they are not considered part of Turkey's modern diaspora, rather, due to living for centuries in their respective regions (and for centuries under Turkish rule), they are now considered "natives" or "locals" as they have been living in these countries prior to the independence and establishment of the modern-nation states.
Today, whilst the Turkish people form a majority in the Republic of Turkey and Northern Cyprus, they also form one of the "Two Communities" in the Republic of Cyprus, as well as significant minorities in the Balkans, the Caucasus, the Levant, the Middle East and North Africa. Consequently, the Turkish ethnicity and/or language is officially recognised under the constitutional law of several states, particularly in the Balkans.
Turkish communities
Cyprus
According to the 1960 Constitution of the Republic of Cyprus (Articles 2 and 3) the Turkish Cypriots are recognised as one of the "Two Communities" of the Republic (alongside the Greek Cypriots). Hence, legally, they have equal power-sharing rights with the Greek Cypriots and are not defined as a "minority group", despite being fewer in numbers (numbering 1,128 in the south of the island in the 2011 census). The Turkish language is an official language of the republic, alongside the Greek language. However, due to the Cyprus crisis of 1963–64, followed by the Greek-led 1974 Cypriot coup d'état and then the 1974 Turkish invasion of Cyprus, the northern half of the island was occupied by Turkey and the Turkish Cypriots declared their own "state" - the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC), recognized only by Turkey - in 1983. Today it is partly populated by Turkish Cypriots and mostly by Turkish settlers. According to the 2011 "TRNC" census, the population of Northern Cyprus was 286,257.
“Turkish communities in the former Ottoman Empire” enters the record as open-knowledge reference entry. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Turkish, communities and former can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 29, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7855380. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1960, 2011, 1963 and 1974.
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This entry incorporates text from “Turkish communities in the former Ottoman Empire” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.