Talk:Turkey

I would like to raise a methodological concern regarding how ethnic composition data is handled on this article in comparison with other country articles across Wikipedia. On the Turkey page, ethnic group percentages are presented as approximate ranges (for example, estimates such as 70–80%), explicitly labeled as academic or secondary estimates rather than census-based data. This approach acknowledges uncertainty and reflects the reality that official ethnic statistics are not collected, while still providing readers with a broad demographic framework supported by scholarly literature. However, similar academic estimates are systematically absent from the articles of many European countries (such as Germany, France, the United Kingdom, and others), despite the existence of extensive peer-reviewed research, demographic reconstructions, migration-background statistics, parental-origin data, and language-use surveys. In these cases, ethnic composition sections are often omitted entirely, even where uncertainty ranges would be comparable or substantially narrower (for example, estimates in the range of 1–6% for specific groups). From a demographic and statistical methodology perspective, uncertainty ranges of 1–6% for smaller population groups are widely regarded as acceptable, particularly when assumptions are transparent and sources are clearly cited. In relative terms, such estimates often involve less proportional uncertainty than broad majority estimates such as 70–80%. This raises questions about internal consistency in editorial standards. Moreover, this asymmetry appears to follow a broader geographic pattern. Articles on countries commonly classified as “Eastern” or “non-Western” (e.g. Turkey, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Egypt, Afghanistan) frequently include ethnic percentage estimates based on non-census academic sources, while articles on Western European states do not, even when the epistemic basis for estimation is comparable. This selective application risks reproducing a form of epistemic imbalance, where demographic fragmentation is emphasized in some regions but avoided in others. My concern is not about advocating for particular numerical values, nor about promoting ethnic categorization as an end in itself. Rather, it is about whether Wikipedia applies a consistent methodological standard across countries. Either clearly labeled academic estimates should be treated uniformly wherever reliable sources exist, or such estimates should be avoided altogether to maintain symmetry and neutrality. I would appreciate clarification on the rationale behind this apparent asymmetry and guidance on what constitutes best practice for handling ethnic composition data in cases where official statistics are unavailable but scholarly estimates exist. Mailbox1978 (talk) 13:54, 29 January 2026 (UTC)

@Mailbox1978 Are you suggesting this article should be changed and if so how exactly? Chidgk1 (talk) 07:37, 31 January 2026 (UTC)

Yes. To be precise, I am suggesting a specific and limited change to this article.

My proposal is to remove the ethnic composition figures from the infobox that are sourced to the CIA World Factbook.

The rationale is methodological consistency:

• Infoboxes are intended to summarize standardized, widely comparable, and officially defined data (such as population, area, GDP, official language, currency).

• Ethnic composition in Turkey is not collected via an official census, and CIA World Factbook figures are themselves secondary estimates compiled from heterogeneous sources.

• Comparable CIA-based ethnic breakdowns are not included in the infoboxes of most European country articles, even where the CIA Factbook provides analogous estimates.

As a result, the current presentation gives Turkey an exceptional treatment, highlighting speculative demographic data in the infobox while other countries are not treated similarly.

This does not require removing all discussion of ethnicity from the article body. If needed, academic or qualitative discussion can remain in the “Ethnic groups” section with appropriate caveats.

My suggestion is therefore narrowly scoped:

• remove ethnic composition figures from the infobox,

• retain or discuss ethnicity only in the article body where nuance and sourcing can be properly explained.

This would bring the Turkey article into closer alignment with how infoboxes are used across Wikipedia and improve cross-country consistency. Mailbox1978 (talk) 09:24, 31 January 2026 (UTC)

@Mailbox1978 OK thanks I understand now. So I suggest you retitle this as “Remove ethnic composition figures from the infobox”. But I highly doubt you will get concensus for this. Chidgk1 (talk) 10:40, 31 January 2026 (UTC)

I change the title into this: Consistency in the treatment of ethnic composition in country infoboxes

Mailbox1978 (talk) 19:16, 31 January 2026 (UTC)

@Mailbox1978 This talk page is only about this article. If you want to make a general point then Wikipedia:WikiProject Countries might be the place. Chidgk1 (talk) 11:30, 2 February 2026 (UTC)

Thank you very much. Mailbox1978 (talk) 13:05, 2 February 2026 (UTC)

@Mailbox1978 Even though nobody has opposed this so far if I remove it based on this discussion someone will put it back in and complain that it was not properly discussed, because they don’t want to spend time reading the initial wall of text and will say the title was misleading. I suggest you start a new discussion with a title specifically about this article and make your case more succinctly without all the general points. Chidgk1 (talk) 19:35, 3 February 2026 (UTC)

• Support The CIA estimate is ten years old. Although many Syrians and Iraqis have since returned to those countries we don't know what proportion of their children who may have stayed here and are now adult would describe themselves as "Arab". And we don't know how people would describe themselves who are now adult and have one parent who described themselves as Kurd and another parent self-described as ethnic Turk. Also I suspect some people with Turkish nationality would refuse to answer the question nowadays. I was tempted to write a political rant here but managed to restrain myself. Chidgk1 (talk) 10:55, 31 January 2026 (UTC)
• Comment I understand the comment about systemic bias and a type of almost Orientalist 'othering' of non-Western states that emphasize their 'arbitrariness' as nation-states but not giving the same treatment to, say, France. However, I have three concerns. For one, this imbalance may be reflected in reliable sources and 'ethnicity', traditionally defined, may meet notability criteria in some states but not in others. As in, other divisions (say, "Whiteness" and "Blackness") may be more salient in other countries and that data may be included in lieu of standard ethnic group data. This is the case in, for example, the UK article. Secondly, what appears to be bias in Wikipedia may actually be bias elsewhere, as sources may uncritically accept the nation-statehood of Western states but not of non-Western states. This is an incredibly hard problem to solve inside Wikipedia. Finally, I would prefer adding data to other pages, not removing data from this infobox, as I think ethnic groups are a notable part of Turkish demographics, uncertainty aside. Uness232 (talk) 13:47, 31 January 2026 (UTC)

  I am proposing a specific and limited change to improve consistency across country articles.

  The ethnic composition field should be removed from the Turkey infobox.

  Infoboxes are intended to summarize standardized and broadly comparable information. In Turkey’s case, ethnic composition figures are not based on an official census and rely on secondary estimates (such as the CIA World Factbook). Comparable secondary estimates are not included in the infoboxes of most other countries, particularly European states, even when similar data exists.

  Retaining such figures in the Turkey infobox therefore gives the article exceptional treatment, placing non-standardized demographic estimates in a highly prominent position that is not used elsewhere.

  This proposal does not require removing discussion of ethnicity from the article body. Qualitative or sourced academic discussion can remain in the relevant section, where nuance and limitations can be properly explained.

  The suggested change is solely to align the Turkey infobox with prevailing Wikipedia practice by removing ethnic composition from the infobox. Mailbox1978 (talk) 19:24, 31 January 2026 (UTC)

  Comparable secondary estimates are not included in the infoboxes of most other countries, particularly European states, even when similar data exists.

  My response was specifically to address this. This has reasons, as I detailed above.

  I understand the rest of your argument (which you are repeating here), but I am torn. On the one hand, ethnicity is an important driver in Turkish politics and demographics. On the other hand, I acknowledge the issue in terms of imbalance, but I have no good solution. That's it from me really. Uness232 (talk) 23:13, 31 January 2026 (UTC)

  @Uness232 You are going off topic - this talk page is only about this article - in 2026 almost everyone accepts that Turkey is a nation state Chidgk1 (talk) 19:57, 3 February 2026 (UTC)

  @Chidgk1 That's not what I mean, and I am not going off topic. When I say nation-statehood, I don't mean international recognition. I mean this: in the Spain article, there is no ethnicity column, despite numerous independence movements and people who don't consider themselves "Spanish" but "Catalan" or "Basque" in the country. This is because sources implicitly accept Spain's nation-statehood, that all identities are sub-identities within "Spaniard" and that every citizen of Spain is a "Spaniard". Same thing goes for France. This was the exact programme of the early republic and yet the sources don't accept this definition in Turkey. There's an implicit rejection of Turkey's nation-statehood in the sources. I am acknowledging that this may be biased, but that there is likely nothing we can do about this. Uness232 (talk) 00:07, 4 February 2026 (UTC)

  I disagree.

  The claim that ethnic composition appears in the Turkey infobox simply because “sources provide numerical breakdowns for Turkey but not for Spain or France” is incorrect. Comparable secondary sources do exist for Spain and other European states, including demographic reconstructions based on language use, parental origin, and regional identity.

  The difference, therefore, is not the availability of sources but how selectively they are elevated to infobox prominence. If the presence of quantified secondary estimates is sufficient to justify an infobox field, then countries such as Spain should also include one. If such estimates are considered too heterogeneous or sensitive for infobox use, then Turkey should not be treated as an exception.

  Maintaining ethnic composition in the Turkey infobox while excluding comparable cases elsewhere reflects a non-uniform editorial standard, not a neutral reflection of sources. Mailbox1978 (talk) 05:40, 4 February 2026 (UTC)

  @Mailbox1978 I understand your point, but that's not what I am saying. I know that data is available (in fact in much better availability) in the West, but we are, as Wikipedians, not the only judge of importance. When including or excluding such a parameter from the infobox, we are sort of at the mercy of an "argument of importance from sources", which is essentially just the fact that if scholarly sources using demographic data place importance on the ethnic makeup of a country, it is more likely to be included in the infobox. Just to be clear, the scholarly sources I am talking about are not the demographic researchers themselves, but rather authors using those sources to make a point.

  Let me rephrase it this way. The current Kurdish conflict has been extensively documented with an outsiders' critical eye in Western (more specifically English) sources. Its importance to the scholarly sphere is very high. For a variety of reasons, the same attention is not shown to say, Brittany, and scholarship is more comfortable calling all citizens of France 'French', no matter their ethnicity.

  Please note that this is not me disagreeing. I note the imbalance, but I have two concerns. I am hesitant to agree because ethnicity is an important demographic statistic in Turkey, and I would much rather add data to other countries than remove statistics here. On the other hand, for the reasons I've been talking about, it is unlikely that there would be consensus for adding material to other articles.

  As I said, sometimes the ball is not entirely on our court. Uness232 (talk) 06:02, 4 February 2026 (UTC)

• Consistency is not an objective in itself. Elimination of bias can be an objective. Ethnicity is a deeply cultural topic, not a physical property which you can observe anywhere in the world aside of context. In the context of Turkey, the Kurdish minority is a topic of first importance in understanding the fabric of the country, as is in a way the erasure and assimilation of past minorities that have held comparable importance (Jews, Greeks, Armenians). This cannot be compared to the presence of immigrant communities in some Western European countries, the counting of which is indeed an issue in itself. Several other comparable countries do have an ethnic group section in infobox. I checked Romania, Hungary, Israel, Russia, Poland, Belgium, Netherlands, Austria, Morocco, Lebanon, Malta and they have an ethnic groups section in infobox. Place Clichy (talk) 06:56, 4 February 2026 (UTC)

  While I am not for removing the ethnic groups section, I do want to say that the visibility (or lack thereof) of the erasure and assimilation of past minorities in Western European versus non-Western countries is a potential bias we incur when we assume that the diversity of said countries are made up of "immigrant communities". One might indeed argue that the context in which we observe "ethnicity" in general, not just on Wikipedia, is itself biased towards viewing countries where the nation-state building process is older and more complete as being a homogenous "nation-state".

  This is, of course, WP:RGW territory, which is why the sources' uncritical acceptance of Western nation-statehood is impossible to combat on Wikipedia, but I am not sure that we are "eliminating bias" this way. Uness232 (talk) 07:28, 4 February 2026 (UTC)

  I expressed myself poorly. I didn't mean that eliminating bias is accomplished by treating country infoboxes differently, au contraire I thought in fact that we must be extra careful to distance ourselves from our various biases when looking at these differences.

  That said, what constitutes or not an ethnicity or ethnic group is dependent of the national context. In the case of France which I know best, this nation established itself as one and indivisible some 235 years ago, long before the concept of ethnicity emerged. Diversity is of course not limited to immigrants, but is regarded as minority languages (e.g. Breton, Basque, Corsican, Occitan) rather than distinct ethnicities. In fact, it would be strange to ask even speakers of these minority languages if they are of Breton or French ethnicity or both, they would probably not see a contradiction between being one and the other at the same time. The situation is entirely different especially in post-WWI Eastern European countries which often recognized official minorities following the major border changes that occurred then. Place Clichy (talk) 08:40, 4 February 2026 (UTC)

  I understand what you are saying. That being said I believe my point stands, and actually is supported by your second paragraph; what we consider an ethnicity and who we believe when affording "ethnicity" status to a people-group are not neutral acts. After all, according to the Turkish Constitution, Turkey is also one and indivisible, and every citizen of Turkey is a Turk/is Turkish; there are (supposedly) no non-Turks in Turkey. The intent of the state, which some (though far from all) minorities accept, is the same as the French one, that there is no contradiction between being Turkish and being Kurdish, Armenian, Laz, etc. And at times, just like the French state, Turkey has repressed its regional languages to create this indivisibility. What me and @Mailbox1978 seem to agree on is that there is an imbalance here; while Spain, part of which pretty recently tried to break away, has no ethnicity infobox, Turkey does. Difference is I don't believe this has anything to do with Wikipedia's editorial standards, but rather biases in scholarly sources in general (and therefore that there is nothing we can do about it). Diversity in Western countries with old processes of national consolidation are rarely talked about as having multiple ethnicities, while the term ethnicity is then imported into non-Western countries with similar diversity but newer processes of national consolidation. That is to say, whether we represent a people-group as an ethnicity may not have to do with an internal quality of the people-group but rather the perspective of the authors that use that label.

  I am saying this not so that anything be done about it. It's WP:RGW. But I think the original comment makes a pretty important point and highlights a real bias. See Ethnic groups of Europe too. Uness232 (talk) 10:18, 4 February 2026 (UTC)

  In fact I feel we agree on plenty of things. The nation-building process of modern Turkey is a classical example, and a much studied one, of the making of a unitary state.

  Another case that can be compared is the Cyprus article, which lists ethnicities in infobox but does not give percentages. In the case of Cyprus, although the multi-ethnic (say multi-cultural if you prefer) nature of the country is a defining feature of it, it would simply be impossible to put a figure without making significant assumptions both in the numerator and the denominator: would you count inhabitants of the Southern part, or include the Northern part, or people from mainland Turkey who moved there, or keep figures prior to 1963 or 1974? Answering any of these questions would be adopting a bias or another.

  Similarly, in France and Spain, although one can recognize that Basque or Catalan or Alsatian identities do exist, it would be quite a challenge to assign one person to one of these identities with scientific rigor, or to count them. Would you count as Catalan the number of inhabitants of Catalonia regardless of self-identification? Add Valencia and the Baleares? Only count those that voted yes in one of the independence referendums? What a respectic academic can write is e.g. "Catalonia has N millions inhabitants" or "N millions people voted for independence, which is N% of the electoral body", but not "Catalans are N% of the population of Catalonia/Spain". I know people who are proud of Alsatian identity and the Alsatian language, but you can't really ever say that Alsatians are a given percentage population of Alsace or France, or count the population of Alsace as a region as Alsatian.

  The fact is that the Kurdish minority in Turkey exists, is the topic of academic research, and that the minority and the Kurdish conflict are one of the biggest challenges that Turkey as a country faced in the past decades and continues to face. The quality and availability of research on the Kurds, including academic population estimates, is in the end not discriminatory against Turkey. The same can be said about Lebanon (which used to conduct censuses but has not done so for decades for well-known reasons) or Syria. Place Clichy (talk) 10:23, 5 February 2026 (UTC)

  I also agree with large parts of what you are saying, and just to clarify, I am not claiming that the problems in Turkish nation-statehood are in any case not worth studying, or discriminatory to study. I am simply saying that not enough is said about (Western) Europe (in scholarship too) in this context and therefore the context in which we observe ethnicity itself is not neutral. In any case this is turning into a political/philosophical discussion that may fall under WP:NOTFORUM. I do want to say some things, however.

  The problems of enumeration you talk about also exist for Kurds, which is why the CIA factbook lists such large uncertainties. Are Zazas Kurds? How many crypto-Armenians fled the Armenian Genocide and got Kurdified? How many L1 Kurdish speakers don't identify as Kurdish? These are all issues that are unsolvable and basically create the same problem you just described in Catalan. And while I also accept that many authors have made ambitious attempts at uncovering the number of Kurds, I believe that this in itself is a problem of unequal reification. Minority ethnicities are treated as "more real" in some contexts than others. Western scholarship has a history of treating non-Western attempts at consolidation as more arbitrary, and the ethnic groups that inhabit such lands as far more discontinuous than they actually are. There is plenty of post-colonial research that goes into this problem, and this is a huge part of 19th-century Ottoman history. That being said, we follow sources and WP:RGW, of course.

  There are indeed other WP pages in which similar problems occur due to inadequate or low-quality sources, rather than systemic imbalances that are reflected in the real-world. Conceptual articles about music are fundamentally some of the most horrid in this sense: Western classical music has one article, making one article out of a heterogenous and multi-ethnic tradition based on geographic and cultural ties, while Turkish makam and Arabic maqam remain separate, with no article to connect them (Ottoman music's scope is unfortunately the same as Turkish makam); this time reifying music traditions not based on geography but by ethnic belonging, assuming that ethnicities are more real in this part of the world. In reality, music in Turkey and Syria are fundamentally far more similar to each other when compared to say, Syria and Algeria.

  Anyway, off topic, just trying to explain my understanding of these biases. Uness232 (talk) 04:32, 6 February 2026 (UTC)

  I would also like to clarify an important empirical distinction that has not yet been addressed.

  In the examples where ethnic composition does appear in country infoboxes, the data source is overwhelmingly official and state-produced:

  Romania, Hungary, Israel, Russia, Belgium, the Netherlands, Austria: figures published by official statistical authorities

  Poland and Malta: figures derived from official election or legally declared identity data

  In these cases, ethnicity appears in the infobox precisely because it is treated as a formal, standardized statistical category by the state itself.

  By contrast, in Turkey and Lebanon, there is no such official data. The infobox figures rely almost exclusively on external secondary estimates, most notably the CIA World Factbook. This places Turkey and Lebanon in a fundamentally different category from the countries listed above.

  This difference matters. Infoboxes are not meant to elevate external reconstructions of population structure to the same status as officially defined national statistics. Where states do not collect or publish ethnic data, Wikipedia should be especially cautious about presenting speculative estimates in the infobox.

  Notably, in cases such as Morocco, where official ethnic statistics are also absent, ethnic composition is discussed within the article body rather than the infobox, which further supports this distinction.

  For these reasons, the continued inclusion of CIA-based ethnic estimates in the Turkey infobox represents an inconsistency not only across countries, but across data provenance standards. If official data is the implicit threshold for infobox inclusion elsewhere, Turkey should not be treated as an exception. Mailbox1978 (talk) 11:36, 4 February 2026 (UTC)

  Governments don't have a monopoly of knowledge. The CIA World Factbook is not the ultimate source of the estimate. It is a collation of sources, themselves academic and reliable, and which can also be added to the article. Place Clichy (talk)

In the English language the official language of the country is "Türkiye" not "Turkey". In the Türkish language the official name of the country is the same. The official name of the country of Türkiye is "Türkiye" according to the Türkish constitution as well as all of the English translations of the Türkish constitution. The official name of the country of Türkiye is "Türkiye" in English (for both British-English and American-English) according to the United Nations which is the authority that dictates the spelling of the name of the country in any language. "Türkiye" is the only accepted spelling of the name of the country in English and Türkish for both the English and Türkish alphabet. "Türkiye" is the only commonly used word to refer to the country. This is true in all languages. "Türkiye" is the only official name of the country and this article needs to reflect this change. It's an official government change that is reflected and appears in all official government documents in English and Türkish internationally. This change is important and overdue. This change needs to be made for every use of the word "Turkey" to be changed to "Türkiye". This discussion shouldn't be removed since it's a valid and legitimate discussion and any attempt to do so would be a violation of international law. This change is mandatory and necessary. ~2026-93297-1 (talk) 10:00, 11 February 2026 (UTC)

Yes, the official short name is "Türkiye", but nearly every English-speaker calls the country "Turkey". International law does not concern itself with what a country is called in a foreign language. Phil Bridger (talk) 12:48, 11 February 2026 (UTC)