Turks of Romania

The Turks of Romania, also known as Romanian Turks, (Turkish: Romanya Türkleri, Romanian: Turcii din România) are ethnic Turks who form an ethnic minority in Romania. According to the 2011 census, there were 28,226 Turks living in the country, forming a minority of some 0.15% of the population.[1] Of these, 81.1% were recorded in the Dobruja region of the country's southeast, near the Black Sea, in the counties of Constanța (21,014) and Tulcea (1,891), with a further 8.5% residing in the national capital Bucharest (2,388).[4]

Not to be confused with Tatars of Romania.
Turks of Romania
Total population
28,226 (2011 census)[1]
est. 55,000[2] to 80,000[3]
Regions with significant populations
Languages
Religion
Islam
Distribution of Turks in Romania (2002 census)
Part of a series of articles on
Turkish people

History
See also: Islam in Romania

Turkic settlement has a long history in the Dobruja region, various groups such as Bulgars, Pechenegs, Cumans and Turkmen settling in the region between the 7th and 13th centuries, and probably contributing to the formation of a Christian autonomous polity in the 14th century. An important event in the history of the Turkish population was however the Ottoman conquest of the region in the early 15th century. Hence, by the 17th century most of the settlements in Dobruja had Turkish names, either due to colonisations[5] or through assimilation of the Islamised pre-Ottoman Turkic populations. In the nineteenth century, Turks and Tatars were more numerous in Dobruja than the Romanians.[6]

Turks (dark purple) in Northern Dobruja (1903)
Demographic history in Dobruja
Ethnicity 1880[7] 1899[7] 1913[8] 19301[9] 1956[10] 1966[10] 1977[10] 1992[10] 2002[10]
All 139,671 258,242 380,430 437,131 593,659 702,461 863,348 1,019,766 971,643
Romanian 43,671 (31%) 118,919 (46%) 216,425 (56.8%) 282,844 (64.7%) 514,331 (86.6%) 622,996 (88.7%) 784,934 (90.9%) 926,608 (90.8%) 883,620 (90.9%)
Bulgarian 24,915 (17%) 38,439 (14%) 51,149 (13.4%) 42,070 (9.6%) 749 (0.13%) 524 (0.07%) 415 (0.05%) 311 (0.03%) 135 (0.01%)
Turkish 18,624 (13%) 12,146 (4%) 20,092 (5.3%) 21,748 (5%) 11,994 (2%) 16,209 (2.3%) 21,666 (2.5%) 27,685 (2.7%) 27,580 (2.8%)
Tatar 29,476 (21%) 28,670 (11%) 21,350 (5.6%) 15,546 (3.6%) 20,239 (3.4%) 21,939 (3.1%) 22,875 (2.65%) 24,185 (2.4%) 23,409 (2.4%)
Russian-Lipovan 8,250 (6%) 12,801 (5%) 35,859 (9.4%) 26,210 (6%)² 29,944 (5%) 30,509 (4.35%) 24,098 (2.8%) 26,154 (2.6%) 21,623 (2.2%)
Ruthenian
(Ukrainian from 1956)		 455 (0.3%) 13,680 (5%) 33 (0.01%) 7,025 (1.18%) 5,154 (0.73%) 2,639 (0.3%) 4,101 (0.4%) 1,465 (0.1%)
Dobrujan Germans 2,461 (1.7%) 8,566 (3%) 7,697 (2%) 12,023 (2.75%) 735 (0.12%) 599 (0.09%) 648 (0.08%) 677 (0.07%) 398 (0.04%)
Greek 4,015 (2.8%) 8,445 (3%) 9,999 (2.6%) 7,743 (1.8%) 1,399 (0.24%) 908 (0.13%) 635 (0.07%) 1,230 (0.12%) 2,270 (0.23%)
Roma 702 (0.5%) 2,252 (0.87%) 3,263 (0.9%) 3,831 (0.88%) 1,176 (0.2%) 378 (0.05%) 2,565 (0.3%) 5,983 (0.59%) 8,295 (0.85%)

Demographics
Hunchiar Mosque in Constanța, built in 1867–1868 by Ottoman sultan Abd-ul-Aziz
Ottoman clock tower in Giurgiu
Statue of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, Calea Victoriei, Bucharest

The majority of Turks live in the historical region of Northern Dobruja (Turkish: Dobruca), particularly in Constanța County, where they number 21,014 and make up 3.3% of the population, Tulcea County with 1,891 (0.94%) and Bucharest with 2,388 (0.14%). Dobromir, a commune in Constanța County, is the only one in Romania with a Turkish majority (61.93%). As an officially recognised ethnic minority, Turks have one seat reserved for them in the Romanian Chamber of Deputies, which has been held by the Democratic Turkish Union of Romania since 1992. An important Turkish community also used to live until 1970 on the island of Ada Kaleh.

After 1989, a significant number of Turkish entrepreneurs started investing and establishing business ventures in Romania, and a certain proportion chose to take up residence in Romania. Unofficial sources estimate there are 12 thousand Turkish citizens in Bucharest.[11]

Religion

The Romanian Census of 2011 counted 27,698 ethnic Turks, of which 26,903 were Muslims (or 97.1 percent). Around 505 Turks were Orthodox (1.8 percent), while 147 Turks (0.5 percent) belonged to other religions.[12]

Notable people
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See also

References
  1. National Institute of Statistics 2011, 10.
  2. Phinnemore 2006, 157.
  3. Constantin, Goschin & Dragusin 2008, 59.
  4. National Institute of Statistics 2011, 6.
  5. Brozba 2010, 48
  6. Boia 2001, 20.
  7. G. Dănescu, Dobrogea (La Dobroudja). Étude de Géographie physique et ethnographique
  8. Roman, I. N. (1919). "La population de la Dobrogea. D'apres le recensement du 1er janvier 1913". In Demetrescu, A (ed.). La Dobrogea Roumaine. Études et documents (in French). Bucarest. OCLC 80634772.
  9. Calculated from results of the 1930 census per county, taken from Mănuilă, Sabin (1939). La Population de la Dobroudja (in French). Bucarest: Institut Central de Statistique. OCLC 1983592.
  10. Calculated from statistics for the counties of Tulcea and Constanţa from "Populaţia după etnie la recensămintele din perioada 1930–2002, pe judete" (PDF) (in Romanian). Guvernul României — Agenţia Naţională pentru Romi. pp. 5–6, 13–14. Retrieved 2007-05-02.
  11. Turci at Noile minorități din București
  12. Romanian Census 2011
  13. "Activitate parlamentară Fedbi Osman".
  14. "Activitate CJC Fedbi Osman".

Bibliography
  • Brozba, Gabriela (2010), Between Reality and Myth: A Corpus-based Analysis of the Stereotypic Image of Some Romanian Ethnic Minorities, GRIN Verlag, ISBN 3-640-70386-3.
  • Constantin, Daniela L.; Goschin, Zizi; Dragusin, Mariana (2008), "Ethnic entrepreneurship as an integration factor in civil society and a gate to religious tolerance. A spotlight on Turkish entrepreneurs in Romania", Journal for the Study of Religions and Ideologies, 7 (20): 28–41
  • National Institute of Statistics (2002), Population by ethnic groups, regions, counties and areas (PDF), Romania - National Institute of Statistics
  • National Institute of Statistics (2011), Comunicat de presă privind rezultatele provizorii ale Recensământului Populaţiei şi Locuinţelor – 2011 (PDF), Romania-National Institute of Statistics
  • Phinnemore, David (2006), The EU and Romania: Accession and Beyond, The Federal Trust for Education & Research, ISBN 1-903403-78-2
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