Turkey's population tops 83.15M in 2019

Turkey's population reached 83.15 million as of end of 2019, a 1.39% rise year-on-year, the country’s statistical authority said on Tuesday. The Turkish Statistical Institute (TurkStat) data showed that the population residing in Turkey soared 1.15 million people from the previous year. "Male population was 41,721,136 people and female population was 41,433,861 people," the institute said. Males’ share of the total population was 50.2%, while women made up 49.8%, according to TurkStat.  According to the official data, the annual population growth rate in 2018 was 1.47%. "The proportion of the working age population aged 15-64 increased from 66.5% in 2007 to 67.8% in 2019," it said. "Accordingly, the proportion of child population aged 0-14 decreased from 26.4% to 23.1%, proportion of population aged 65 and over increased from 7.1% to 9.1%." The median age of the country's population was 32.4 as of the end of 2019, up from 32 in 2018. TurkStat describes the median age as the age of the person in the middle of the ages of all the people in the population, from newborns to the oldest elderly person.

Istanbul grows more populous

Some 92.8% of Turkey’s population are living in cities and district centers – up 0.5 percentage points annually – versus 7.2% in towns and villages.Turkey's population density – the number of people per square kilometer – surged 2 people on a yearly basis to reach 107 last year. The population of Istanbul, the most crowded city, rose 451,543 people to reach over 15.5 million people as of the end of 2019. The city makes up 18.66% of Turkey's total population. "Number of people per square kilometer was 108 for Turkey and 2,987 for Istanbul," the institute said. The world-famous metropolis was followed by the capital Ankara with 5.64 million inhabitants and the Aegean province of Izmir with 4.37 million people. 

Bursa, a key industrial province, was Turkey's fourth-biggest city by population with 3.05 million inhabitants, and the Mediterranean resort city of Antalya came fifth with 2.5 million.

Located in eastern Turkey, Tunceli was the least-populous province with 84,660 people, followed by the northeastern city of Bayburt (88,843) and Ardahan in the northeast (97,319).