Turkish is spoken primarily in Turkey, Northern Cyprus, and the Balkans, particularly in Bulgaria, North Macedonia, Serbia, Romania, and Greece. Large emigrant communities exist in Western Europe, especially in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Belgium, France, and the United Kingdom. Outside Europe, Turkish-speaking communities are found in the United States and Australia.
Speakers
Turkish has approximately 72 million native speakers, representing over 90% of Turkey’s population. Around 4 million speakers live outside Turkey, mainly in neighboring countries and Western Europe.
Major Turkish-speaking populations by country:
Country
Speakers
Turkey
68,000,000
Germany
2,100,000
Bulgaria
1,000,000
North Macedonia
200,000
Netherlands
190,000
Cyprus
180,000
France
135,000
Greece
130,000
United States
75,000
Austria
70,000
Belgium
64,000
Serbia
60,000
United Kingdom
60,000
Switzerland
55,000
Australia
40,000
Romania
29,000
Status
Turkish is the official language of Turkey and is spoken by more than 90% of the population. It is also an official language of Cyprus, alongside Greek.
Varieties
Modern Standard Turkish is based on the Istanbul dialect.
Western dialects: Danubian, Karamanli, Rumelian, Razgrad (Balkans)
Eastern dialects: Trabzon, Rize, Erzincan, Elazığ, Gaziantep, Urfa, Eskişehir, Edirne
Historical Periods
Anatolian Turkish (11th–13th c.) – Begins with Turkic settlement in Anatolia
Ottoman Turkish (1299–1923) – Heavily influenced by Arabic and Persian
Modern Turkish (post-1923) – Language reforms under Atatürk, including:
Adoption of the Latin alphabet (1928)
Reduction of Arabo-Persian loanwords
Oldest Documents
The earliest Turkish texts date from the 13th century:
Çarhname – Ahmed Fakih
Gharibname – Aşık Paşa
Divan of Yunus Emre – Religious poetry
Phonology
Vowels
Turkish has 8 vowels, symmetrically organized by:
height (high vs. low)
backness (front vs. back)
roundness (rounded vs. unrounded)
There are no diphthongs, and vowel length is non-phonemic.
Vowel Harmony
A defining feature of Turkish:
All vowels in a word harmonize as front or back
Rounded vowels affect following high vowels only
Low non-initial vowels are always unrounded
Suffix vowels change according to the vowel class of the stem.
Consonants
20 consonants
No initial consonant clusters
Final stops and affricates are devoiced
[k], [g], and [l] have palatalized forms with front vowels
[ʒ] occurs only in loanwords
Stress
Pitch accent typically on the final syllable
Stress accent often on the first syllable
Script and Orthography
Turkish uses a Latin-based alphabet with 29 letters (8 vowels, 21 consonants). Special note:
ğ is not pronounced; it lengthens the preceding vowel or creates a glide [j]
Morphology
General Characteristics
Turkish is a highly agglutinative language:
Each suffix expresses one grammatical function
Suffix order is fixed
No prefixes except in intensive forms
Nominal Morphology
No grammatical gender
Plural: -lar / -ler
Possession: marked by suffixes
Cases:
Absolute (unmarked)
Accusative
Genitive
Dative
Locative
Ablative
Adjectives are not morphologically distinct from nouns and can function adverbially.
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