Population (Ref: Office of the Prime Minister, Directorate General of Press and Information)

According to the 2000 census, 67,844,000 people live in Turkey. However, it is estimated that this figure increased to 71.8 million by the end of 2004. The population which was roughly 13,600,000 in 1927, recorded a fivefold in-crease in 73 years. In the 1990-2000 period the annual population increase was 18.3‰. In the 2000-2010 period, this figure is expected to drop to 14.47‰. In the mean-time, Turkey's population is estimated to reach 77.9 mil-lion people in mid-2010 when the next census is due.

 According to the 1975 census, 58% of the population re-sided in rural and 41.8% in urban areas, while in the 2000 census  it was registered that these ratios had altered  due to migrations and that 23.7 million people, i.e. 35% percent of the population reside in rural and 44 million people, i.e. 64% in urban areas.

Among the 81 provinces in the country, the three most rap-idly growing are İstanbul with a 10 million population, Anka-ra with 4 million and İzmir with 3.4 million. Within the last three decades Antalya registered the greatest increase in population growth rate with a 41.8‰ increase, followed by Şanlıurfa with 36.6‰ and İstanbul with 33.1‰. Tunceli, on the other hand, registered the highest rate of decline with a 35.6‰ decrease.

Females comprise 33.6 million and the males 34.2 million of the population. Turkey is a country with a young popula-tion. The 0-14 age group is 30%, the 15-64 age group 64.4% and the 65+ age group 5.6% of the overall popula-tion. Yet in the European Union countries the proportion of the 0-14 age group in the overall population is 17.2%, near-ly half of that in Turkey, and the 65+ age group is threefold of Turkey with 15.7%.