Turks in North Macedonia
Turkish ethnic community
Turks in North Macedonia, also known as Turkish Macedonians and Macedonian Turks, (Macedonian: Македонски Турци, romanized: Makedonski Turci, Turkish: Makedonya Türkleri) are the ethnic Turks who constitute the third-largest ethnic group in the Republic of North Macedonia. According to the 2021 census, there were 70,961 Turks living in the country, forming a minority of some 3.86% of the population. The community forms a majority in Centar Župa and Plasnica.
History
Ottoman era
Macedonia came under the rule of the Ottoman Turks in 1392, remaining part of the Ottoman Empire for more than 500 years up to 1912 and the Balkan Wars. Ali Rıza Efendi - Mustafa Kemal Atatürk's father comes from Kodžadžik, in Centar Župa Municipality, where there is a memorial house. There is a sizeable amount of Turkified Albanians in Ohrid who originate from the cities of Elbasan, Durrës and Ulcinj. A significant part of the Muslim Albanian population of Kumanovo and Bitola was also Turkified during Ottoman rule.
A sizeable part of the Turkish community in Prilep was of Albanian origin. Serbian historiographer Jovan Hadži-Vasiljević writes that:
"Between Turks and Muslim Albanians who have lived in the city (Prilep), it is very difficult to distinguish, especially between the old families of the city. The Mohammedan Albanian families, as soon as they arrived in the city, merged with the Turks,..."
The Bulgarian researcher Vasil Kanchov wrote in 1900 that many Albanians declared themselves as Turks.
The public source identifies “Turks in North Macedonia” as turkish ethnic community. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Turks, North and Macedonia.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 25, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q2593852. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 2021, 1392, 1912 and 1900.
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This entry incorporates text from “Turks in North Macedonia” 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.