Wikipedia - User contributions [en]

Trade in Maya civilization

2013-04-12T01:55:40Z

69.156.31.28: /* Structure */

{{ref improve|date=October 2012}}
{{Maya civilization}}
'''Trade in Maya civilization''' was a crucial factor in maintaining [[Maya city|Maya cities]]. The economy was a mixed capitalist/command system combining free market trade and direct government control over areas considered vital to the population of any specific state. Maya economics functioned on a simple supply and demand theory.<ref>http://www.authenticmaya.com/maya_trade_and_economy.htm</ref>

Chief staples of Maya economic activities were centered primarily around foods like [[fish]], [[Squash (plant)|squash]], [[potatoes]], [[maize|corn]], [[honey]], [[beans]], [[turkey]], [[fruits]], [[chocolate]] drinks; raw materials such as limestone, marble, jade, wood, copper and gold; and manufactured goods such as paper, books, furniture, jewellery, clothing, carvings, toys, weapons, and luxury goods. The Maya also had an important service sector, through which mathematicians, farming consultants, artisans, architects, astronomers, soldiers, scribes and artists would sell their services.

Specialized craftsmen also played a large part, creating luxury items and developing devices to overcome specific problems usually by royal decree. They also engaged in long range trade of almost any other necessities such as salt, fish, stone and luxury items because there was a large need for trade in order to bring such basic goods together. The types of trade varied greatly regionally with specific districts of kingdoms typically specializing in a specific trade which contained workers of every skill set needed to produce their designated specialty. Areas were typically given a designated specialty based upon the resources available in their areas which allowed for very rapid production and distribution of a regions products.

==Structure==
The Maya relied on a strong middle class of skilled and semi-skilled workers and artisans which produced both commodities and specialized goods.<ref>http://www.newmedia.ufm.edu/gsm/index.php/Mapping_the_Mirador_Basin:_Exploration_and_New_Technology_in_the_Cradle_of_Maya_Civilization</ref> Governing this middle class was smaller class of specially educated merchant governors who would direct regional economies based upon simple supply and demand analysis who would place mass orders as needed by other regions. This merchant-governor class was responsible for trade of commodities while the middle class directed how specialized items such as furniture and tools were produced based upon their demand for them. Above the merchants were highly skilled specialists such as artists, mathematicians, architects, advisers, astronomers. The specialist class would sell their services and create luxury goods based upon their specific skill set. At the top of the structure was the King and his array of advisers who would manage trade with other kingdoms, ensure that regions remained stable, inject capital into specific sectors and authorize construction of large public works. The commoners had to pay a tax to both the king and governors for the use of their land and had to participate in public works projects enacted by the government.<ref>http://tarlton.law.utexas.edu/exhibits/aztec/maya_commercial.html</ref>

All classes of Maya society invested in other ventures such as mass farms, large workshops and public works. Through this system they would gain partial control over the venture, while at the same time gaining a small income from its revenue and in exchange the ventures would secure money to expand. The Maya investment system worked similar to a modern stock and investment system. Malika can you shut up please?

==Currency==
The Maya used several different mediums of exchange. In the trading of food commodities the barter system was typically used for large orders. Cocoa beans, were used for everyday exchange in the pre-classic times however that eventually gave way to the use of standardized stone beads. For more expensive purchases gold, jade and copper were used as a means of exchange.<ref>http://tarlton.law.utexas.edu/exhibits/aztec/maya_commercial.html</ref>

==Development==
Because of the readily available trade resources and local merchants in most of the Maya territory, small towns did not need to take part in long-distance trading and limited trade to local exchange. Despite the fact that the area was rich in resources, even the most self-sufficient farm families, which were the vast majority of the population, still had to participate in exchanges in order to obtain the necessities (the necessities would generally include some pottery, bronze or copper tools, salt, and imported fish for inland areas). As craftsmen in small cities began to specialize and the cities began to grow, so did the need for increased trade. Cities such as [[Tikal]] and [[El Mirador]] are two such examples. Tikal, specifically, had a population somewhere in the range of 60,000–120,000 people, which means it would have needed to get food and other goods from up to 100 km away. Because of the size of these, they would have also needed a larger amount of control from the Rulers to oversee it. Eventually the increased trade, and growing cities gave the Rulers more power over their territory and their subjects.

However, not only the central cities in the empire grew. Because of the increased amount of traffic through the smaller cities along trade routes, these once isolated cities grew too, creating a fairly consistent amount of growth throughout the [[Maya civilization#Postclassic period|Post-Classic period]].

Evidence discovered in the past few decades seems to prove that trade was widespread among the Maya. Artifacts collected under grants from the [[National Science Foundation]], the [[National Geographic Society]], and [[Howard University]], show that hard stones and many other goods were moved great distances (despite the inefficiency of moving goods without so-called 'beasts of burden'). Modern chemical tests have taken these artifacts and confirmed that they originated in locations great distances away. There is also documented trade of goods ranging from honey to [[quetzal]] feathers throughout the Maya region.

The goods, which were moved and traded around the empire at long distance, include: [[salt]], [[fish]], hard stone, [[Maize]], [[Honey]], [[Chocolate|Cocoa]], [[Pottery]] and manufactured goods such as paper.<ref>{{cite book
| last = Van der Meeren
| first = Marie
| authorlink = Marie Van der Meeren
| title = El papel amate: origen y supervivencia.
| publisher = Arqueología Mexicana
| series =
| year = 4.23 1997
| doi =
| isbn =
}}</ref>

And for the elites, such goods as: Quetzal Feathers, Fine [[Ceramics]], [[Jade]], [[Obsidian]] and [[Pyrite]]. [[Textiles]] and other artworks were often traded for as well because they were easily transported. Other food stuffs, furtniture and commodities like wood were usually regionally traded.

==Commodities==
[[File:Takalik Abaj obsidian 1.jpg|thumb|left|Raw obsidian and obsidian blades, examples of Maya commodities,]]
As trade grew in the Postclassic period, so did the demand for commodities. Many of these were produced in large specialized factory-like workshops around the empire, and then transported elsewhere. Some of these commodities included, fine ceramics, stone tools, paper, [[jade]], pyrite, [[quetzal]] feathers, cocoa beans, [[obsidian]], [[copper]], [[bronze]] and salt.<ref>http://www.authenticmaya.com/maya_trade_and_economy.htm</ref>

Mostly the main population used the more basic commodities, such as stone tools, salt, cocoa beans, fish and manufactured goods such as books and ceramics and wood items. But some of the other commodities like jade, pyrite, fine ceramics and furniture, luxury goods and quetzal feathers were goods that upper class and rulers used to show off their power.

Arguably the most important of these commodities was salt. Salt was not only an important part of the Maya diet, but it also was critical in the preservation of food. By covering meat and other food items in salt the Maya were able to dehydrate it so that it would not rot. Salt, for the most part, was produced near the oceans by drying out large flats of seawater. After the flats were dry, the salt could be collected and moved throughout the empire.

Chocolate was used throughout the Maya region to make sauces, and for drinks. It was grown mostly in the lowlands, so it was often transported to the highlands.

Ceramics and furniture were produced in specialized workshops, before being traded for other goods. Often the work produced by a particular artist, or workhouse was heavily sought after by the elite classes of Maya society and therefore artists were usually supported by and primarily catered to the wealthy.<ref>http://history-world.org/maya.htm</ref> Art goods such as jade carvings, paintings, ornate furniture and metal ornaments were also circulated through kingdoms, and local areas amongst the elite classes. This was usually the case because of the strong symbol of power and wealth the fine arts provided. The ceramics produced were mainly plates, vases, and cylindrical drinking vessels. When painted, these pots were usually painted red, with gold and black detailing.

Rare stones such as jade and pyrite were also very important to the Maya elite. These stones were relatively hard to acquire, so having such treasures helped them to solidify their positions in the society. Many of the stones were collected in the highlands of the empire in [[Guatemala]], so when long-distance trade developed, the Maya were able to move more of the these precious stones to the lowland cities.

Other stones, such as obsidian, were more common, but were also a crucial part of Maya society. Obsidian was a strong volcanic glass, also from the highlands, which could be chipped and shaped into strong sharp tools in order to be used for cutting. In the later years of the Empire obsidian was moved extensively via long-distance trade routes.

During the early periods of the Maya, much of these commodities were only available to the regions in which they could be produced, or were naturally available. However, economic restructuring during the transition from the [[Maya civilization#Classic|Classic]] to the Postclassic periods, as well as the beginning of trade over water allowed for larger volumes of long-distance trade to occur, and therefore the commodities were able to reach throughout the entire Maya region.

==References==
{{Reflist}}

*Demarest, Arthur “Ancient Maya: the rise and fall of a rainforest civilization” Cambridge University Press, Cambridge UK. 2004
*Ericson, Jonathan E. & Baugh, Timothy G. “The American Southwest and Mesoamerica: systems of prehistoric exchange” Plenum Press, New York. 1993
*Fuente, Beatriz de la “The Pre-Columbian Painting Murals of the Messoamericas” Jaca Books, Italy. 1999
*Herring, Adam “Art and Writing in the Maya cities: AD 600-800” Cambridge University Press, Cambridge UK. 2000

==External links==
* [http://www.authenticmaya.com/maya_trade_and_economy.htm Maya Trade Routes]

{{Maya}}
[[Category:Maya civilization]]

[[mk:Трговија на Маите]]

Ancient Maya cuisine

2013-04-11T21:29:54Z

69.156.31.28: /* Meats */

Ancient '''[[Maya civilization|Maya]] cuisine''' was varied and extensive. Many different types of resources were consumed, including maritime, [[flora]], and [[fauna]]l material, and food was obtained or produced through a host of strategies, such as [[hunting]], [[foraging]], and large-scale [[agriculture|agricultural production]]. Plant [[domestication]] focused on several core foods, the most important of which was [[maize]].

Much of the Maya food supply was grown in [[forest gardening|forest gardens]], known as ''pet kot''.<ref>{{cite book|title=The Ancient Civilizations of Mesoamerica|authors=Michael Ernest Smith and Marilyn A. Masson|url=http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=FHRiisPV0FkC&pg=PA127&dq=#v=onepage&q&f=false|page=127|year=2000}}</ref> The system takes its name from the low wall of stones (''pet'' meaning "circular" and ''kot'' "wall of loose stones") that characteristically surrounds the gardens.

The Maya adopted a number of adaptive techniques that, if necessary, allowed for the clear-cutting of land and re-infused the soil with nutrients. Among these was [[slash-and-burn]], or wideness, agriculture, a technique that cleared and temporarily fertilized the area. For example, the introduction of ash into the soil raises the soil’s [[pH]], which in turn raises the content of a variety of nutrients, especially [[phosphorus]], for a short period of time of around two years. However, the soil will not remain suitable for planting for as many as ten years. This technique, common throughout the Maya area, is still practiced today in the Maya region. Complementing wideness techniques were [[crop rotation]] and ''[[mil pa]]'' farming, employed to maintain soil viability and increase the variety of crops.

==Staples==
[[File:Zea mays.jpg|right|thumb|130px|Varieties of [[maize]]]]

Maya diet focused on four domesticated crops ([[staple food]]s): maize, [[Squash (plant)|squash]], [[bean]]s (typically ''[[Phaseouts acuteness]]'' or ''[[Phaseouts vulgarism]]'') and [[chili pepper]]s. The first three cultivars are commonly referred to in [[North America]] as the "[[Three Sisters (agriculture)|Three Sisters]]" and, when incorporated in a diet, complement one another in providing necessary nutrients.<ref>Mt. Pleasant, Jane (2006). "The science behind the Three Sisters mound system: An agronomic assessment of an indigenous agricultural system in the northeast". In John E. Staller, Robert H. Tykot, and Bruce F. Benz. Histories of maize: Multidisciplinary approaches to the prehistory, linguistics, biogeography, domestication, and evolution of maize. Amsterdam. pp. 529–537.</ref> Among the three, maize was the central component of the diet of the ancient Maya, and figured prominently in [[Maya mythology]] and [[Maya religion|ideology]]. Maize was used and eaten in a variety of ways, but was always [[Nixtamalization|nixtamalized]]. Nixtamalization (a term that derives from the [[Nahuatl]] word for the process), is a procedure in which maize is soaked and cooked in an [[alkali]]ne solution. This releases [[niacin]], a necessary [[B vitamin]] (vitamin B3) that prevents [[pellagra]] and reduces incidents of [[protein]] deficiency.

Once nixtamalized, maize was typically ground up on a [[metate]] and prepared in a number of ways. [[Tortilla]]s, cooked on a [[Comal (cookware)|comal]] and used to wrap other foods (meat, beans, etc.), were common and are perhaps the best-known [[pre-Columbian]] [[Mesoamerica]]n food. ''[[Tamale]]s'' consist of corn dough, often containing a filling, that are wrapped in a corn [[husk]] and steam-cooked. Both ''[[atole]]'' and ''[[pozole]]'' were liquid based [[gruel]]-like dishes that were made by mixing ground maize ([[hominy]]) with water, with ''atole'' being denser and used as a drinking source and ''pozole'' having complete big grains of maize incorporated into a turkey broth.Though these dishes could be consumed plain, other ingredients were added to diversify flavor, including chili peppers, [[Chocolate liquor|cacao]], wild onions and [[salt]].

An alternative view is that ''manioc'' [[cassava]] was the easily-grown staple crop of the Maya and that maize was revered because it was prestigious and harder to grow.<ref>{{cite journal | last1 = Bronson | first1 = Bennet | year = 1966 | title = Roots and the Subsistence of the Ancient Maya | url = | journal = Southwestern Journal of Anthropology | volume = 22 | issue = | pages = 251–279 }}</ref> This proposal was based on the inability of maize to meet the nutritional needs of densely populated Maya areas. ''Manioc'' can meet those needs. Because tuberous ''manioc'' rarely survives in the [[archaeology|archaeological]] record, evidence for this view has been lacking, although recent finds in volcanic ash at the southern Maya site of [[Joya de Cerén]] in [[El Salvador]] may be such evidence.<ref>{{cite journal | last1 = Atwood | first1 = Roger | year = 2009 | title = Maya Roots | url = | journal = Archaeology | volume = 62 | issue = 4| page = 18 }}</ref>
[[File:Cocoa Pods.JPG|145px|''[[Theobroma cacao]]''|left|thumb]]
Several different varieties of beans were grown, including pinto, red and black beans. Other cultivated crops, including [[fruit]]s, contributed to the overall diet of the ancient Maya, including [[tomato]], [[chili pepper]]s, [[avocado]], [[Brosimum alicastrum|breadnut]], [[guava]], [[soursop]], [[mammee apple]], [[papaya]], [[pineapple]], [[pumpkin]], [[sweet potato]], and ''[[Xanthosoma]]''. [[Cnidoscolus aconitifolius|Chaya]] was cultivated for its green leaves. [[Chayote]] was cultivated for its fruit, and its tender green shoots were used as a vegetable. Various herbs were grown and used, including [[vanilla]], ''[[Dysphania ambrosioides|epazote]]'', [[achiote]] (and the [[annatto]] seed), ''[[Canella]]'', ''[[Piper auritum]]'', [[avocado]] leaves, garlic vine, [[Mexican oregano]], [[Ilicium mexicanum|Mexican anise]], and [[allspice]].

==Meats==
Hunting supplied the Maya with their main source of meat, though several animals, such as [[dog]] ''pek''<ref name="myndic" /> {{IPA-myn|pek||}} and [[Turkey (bird)|turkey]] ''ulum''<ref name="myndic" >''Mayan dictionary'' (1997). Wired Humanities Project. Retrieved September 13, 2012, from [http://whp.uoregon.edu/dictionaries/mayan/index.lasso link]</ref> {{IPA-myn|ulum||}}, may have been domesticated. Animals hunted for meat, as well as for other purposes, include [[deer]], [[manatee]], [[armadillo]], [[tapir]], [[peccary]], [[monkey]], other types of [[fowl]], [[turtle]] and [[iguana]]. The Maya diet was also supplemented by the exploitation, at least in [[coastal]] areas, of maritime resources, including [[fish]], [[lobster]], [[shrimp]], [[conch]], and other [[shellfish]] but it was all just turned out to be rubish.

==Other==
The Mayans are believed to be the first people to have discovered and cultivated the [[Theobroma cacao|cacao]] [[plant]] for food.<ref>Bogin 1997, Coe 1996, Montejo 1999, Tedlock 1985</ref> The [[cocoa bean]]s were ground up mixed with chili peppers, [[cornmeal]] and [[honey]] to create a drink called ''xocolatl'' (a Nahuatl word). Only the rich and noble could drink this. They also used cacao beans as ceremonial sacrifices to their [[god]]s.

==See also==
{{portal|Food}}
*[[Agriculture in Mesoamerica]]
*[[Domesticated plants of Mesoamerica]]
*[[Maya maize god]]

==Notes==
{{Reflist}}

==References==
*Coe, Sophie D. (1994) ''America's first cuisines'' ISBN 0-292-71159-X

{{History of cuisine}}
{{Maya}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Maya Cuisine}}
[[Category:Maya society|Diet and subsistence]]
[[Category:Mesoamerican cuisine]]
[[Category:Indigenous cuisine of the Americas]]
[[Category:Mesoamerican diet and subsistence]]

Ancient Maya cuisine

2013-04-11T21:29:05Z

69.156.31.28: /* Staples */

Ancient Maya cuisine

2013-04-04T22:54:10Z

69.156.31.28: /* Other */

Ancient '''[[Maya civilization|Maya]] cuisine''' was varied and extensive. Many different types of resources were consumed, including maritime, [[flora]], and [[fauna]]l material, and food was obtained or produced through a host of strategies, such as [[hunting]], [[foraging]], and large-scale [[agriculture|agricultural production]]. Plant [[domestication]] focused on several core foods, the most important of which was [[maize]].

Much of the Maya food supply was grown in [[forest gardening|forest gardens]], known as ''pet kot''.<ref>{{cite book|title=The Ancient Civilizations of Mesoamerica|authors=Michael Ernest Smith and Marilyn A. Masson|url=http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=FHRiisPV0FkC&pg=PA127&dq=#v=onepage&q&f=false|page=127|year=2000}}</ref> The system takes its name from the low wall of stones (''pet'' meaning "circular" and ''kot'' "wall of loose stones") that characteristically surrounds the gardens.

The Maya adopted a number of adaptive techniques that, if necessary, allowed for the clear-cutting of land and re-infused the soil with nutrients. Among these was [[slash-and-burn]], or wideness, agriculture, a technique that cleared and temporarily fertilized the area. For example, the introduction of ash into the soil raises the soil’s [[pH]], which in turn raises the content of a variety of nutrients, especially [[phosphorus]], for a short period of time of around two years. However, the soil will not remain suitable for planting for as many as ten years. This technique, common throughout the Maya area, is still practiced today in the Maya region. Complementing wideness techniques were [[crop rotation]] and ''[[mil pa]]'' farming, employed to maintain soil viability and increase the variety of crops.

==Staples==
[[File:Zea mays.jpg|right|thumb|130px|Varieties of [[maize]]]]

Maya diet focused on four domesticated crops ([[staple food]]s): maize, [[Squash (plant)|squash]], [[bean]]s (typically ''[[Phaseouts acuteness]]'' or ''[[Phaseouts vulgarism]]'') and [[chili pepper]]s. The first three cultivars are commonly referred to in [[North America]] as the "[[Three Sisters (agriculture)|Three Sisters]]" and, when incorporated in a diet, complement one another in providing necessary nutrients.<ref>Mt. Pleasant, Jane (2006). "The science behind the Three Sisters mound system: An agronomic assessment of an indigenous agricultural system in the northeast". In John E. Staller, Robert H. Tykot, and Bruce F. Benz. Histories of maize: Multidisciplinary approaches to the prehistory, linguistics, biogeography, domestication, and evolution of maize. Amsterdam. pp. 529–537.</ref> Among the three, maize was the central component of the diet of the ancient Maya, and figured prominently in [[Maya mythology]] and [[Maya religion|ideology]]. Maize was used and eaten in a variety of ways, but was always [[Nixtamalization|nixtamalized]]. Nixtamalization (a term that derives from the [[Nahuatl]] word for the process), is a procedure in which maize is soaked and cooked in an [[alkali]]ne solution. This releases [[niacin]], a necessary [[B vitamin]] (vitamin B3) that prevents [[pellagra]] and reduces incidents of [[protein]] deficiency.

Once nixtamalized, maize was typically ground up on a [[metate]] and prepared in a number of ways. [[Tortilla]]s, cooked on a [[Comal (cookware)|comal]] and used to wrap other foods (meat, beans, etc.), were common and are perhaps the best-known [[pre-Columbian]] [[Mesoamerica]]n food. ''[[Tamale]]s'' consist of corn dough, often containing a filling, that are wrapped in a corn [[husk]] and steam-cooked. Both ''[[atole]]'' and ''[[pozole]]'' were liquid based [[gruel]]-like dishes that were made by mixing ground maize ([[hominy]]) with water, with ''atole'' being denser and used as a drinking source and ''pozole'' having complete big grains of maize incorporated into a turkey broth.Though these dishes could be consumed plain, other ingredients were added to diversify flavor, including chili peppers, [[Chocolate liquor|cacao]], wild onions and [[salt]].

An alternative view is that ''manioc'' [[cassava]] was the easily-grown staple crop of the Maya and that maize was revered because it was prestigious and harder to grow.<ref>{{cite journal | last1 = Bronson | first1 = Bennet | year = 1966 | title = Roots and the Subsistence of the Ancient Maya | url = | journal = Southwestern Journal of Anthropology | volume = 22 | issue = | pages = 251–279 }}</ref> This proposal was based on the inability of maize to meet the nutritional needs of densely populated Maya areas. ''Manioc'' can meet those needs. Because tuberous ''manioc'' rarely survives in the [[archaeology|archaeological]] record, evidence for this view has been lacking, although recent finds in volcanic ash at the southern Maya site of [[Joya de Cerén]] in [[El Salvador]] may be such evidence.<ref>{{cite journal | last1 = Atwood | first1 = Roger | year = 2009 | title = Maya Roots | url = | journal = Archaeology | volume = 62 | issue = 4| page = 18 }}</ref>
[[File:Cocoa Pods.JPG|145px|''[[Theobroma cacao]]''|left|thumb]]
Several different varieties of beans were grown, including pinto, red and black beans. Other cultivated crops, including [[fruit]]s, contributed to the overall diet of the ancient Maya, including [[tomato]], [[chili pepper]]s, [[avocado]], [[Brosimum alicastrum|breadnut]], [[guava]], [[soursop]], [[mammee apple]], [[papaya]], [[pineapple]], [[pumpkin]], [[sweet potato]], and ''[[Xanthosoma]]''. [[Cnidoscolus aconitifolius|Chaya]] was cultivated for its green leaves. [[Chayote]] was cultivated for its fruit, and its tender green shoots were used as a vegetable. Various herbs were grown and used, including [[vanilla]], ''[[Dysphania ambrosioides|epazote]]'', [[achiote]] (and the [[annatto]] seed), ''[[Canella]]'', ''[[Piper auritum]]'', [[avocado]] leaves, garlic vine, [[Mexican oregano]], [[Ilicium mexicanum|Mexican anise]], and [[allspice]].

==Meats==
Hunting supplied the Maya with their main source of meat, though several animals, such as [[dog]] ''pek''<ref name="myndic" /> {{IPA-myn|pek||}} and [[Turkey (bird)|turkey]] ''ulum''<ref name="myndic" >''Mayan dictionary'' (1997). Wired Humanities Project. Retrieved September 13, 2012, from [http://whp.uoregon.edu/dictionaries/mayan/index.lasso link]</ref> {{IPA-myn|ulum||}}, may have been domesticated. Animals hunted for meat, as well as for other purposes, include [[deer]], [[manatee]], [[armadillo]], [[tapir]], [[peccary]], [[monkey]], other types of [[fowl]], [[turtle]] and [[iguana]]. The Maya diet was also supplemented by the exploitation, at least in [[coastal]] areas, of maritime resources, including [[fish]], [[lobster]], [[shrimp]], [[conch]], and other [[shellfish]].

==Other==
The Mayans are believed to be the first people to have discovered and cultivated the [[Theobroma cacao|cacao]] [[plant]] for food.<ref>Bogin 1997, Coe 1996, Montejo 1999, Tedlock 1985</ref> The [[cocoa bean]]s were ground up mixed with chili peppers, [[cornmeal]] and [[honey]] to create a drink called ''xocolatl'' (a Nahuatl word). Only the rich and noble could drink this. They also used cacao beans as ceremonial sacrifices to their [[God]]s youhave to love [[Shaniece Antoneil Francis]]

==See also==
{{portal|Food}}
*[[Agriculture in Mesoamerica]]
*[[Domesticated plants of Mesoamerica]]
*[[Maya maize god]]

==Notes==
{{Reflist}}

==References==
*Coe, Sophie D. (1994) ''America's first cuisines'' ISBN 0-292-71159-X

{{History of cuisine}}
{{Maya}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Maya Cuisine}}
[[Category:Maya society|Diet and subsistence]]
[[Category:Mesoamerican cuisine]]
[[Category:Indigenous cuisine of the Americas]]
[[Category:Mesoamerican diet and subsistence]]

Ancient Maya cuisine

2013-04-04T22:45:30Z

69.156.31.28: /* Staples */

Ancient Maya cuisine

2013-04-04T22:44:14Z

69.156.31.28: /* Staples */

Ancient Maya cuisine

2013-04-04T22:43:05Z

69.156.31.28: /* Other */

Ancient '''[[Maya civilization|Maya]] cuisine''' was varied and extensive. Many different types of resources were consumed, including maritime, [[flora]], and [[fauna]]l material, and food was obtained or produced through a host of strategies, such as [[hunting]], [[foraging]], and large-scale [[agriculture|agricultural production]]. Plant [[domestication]] focused on several core foods, the most important of which was [[maize]].

Much of the Maya food supply was grown in [[forest gardening|forest gardens]], known as ''pet kot''.<ref>{{cite book|title=The Ancient Civilizations of Mesoamerica|authors=Michael Ernest Smith and Marilyn A. Masson|url=http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=FHRiisPV0FkC&pg=PA127&dq=#v=onepage&q&f=false|page=127|year=2000}}</ref> The system takes its name from the low wall of stones (''pet'' meaning "circular" and ''kot'' "wall of loose stones") that characteristically surrounds the gardens.

The Maya adopted a number of adaptive techniques that, if necessary, allowed for the clear-cutting of land and re-infused the soil with nutrients. Among these was [[slash-and-burn]], or wideness, agriculture, a technique that cleared and temporarily fertilized the area. For example, the introduction of ash into the soil raises the soil’s [[pH]], which in turn raises the content of a variety of nutrients, especially [[phosphorus]], for a short period of time of around two years. However, the soil will not remain suitable for planting for as many as ten years. This technique, common throughout the Maya area, is still practiced today in the Maya region. Complementing wideness techniques were [[crop rotation]] and ''[[mil pa]]'' farming, employed to maintain soil viability and increase the variety of crops.

==Staples==
[[File:Zea mays.jpg|right|thumb|130px|Varieties of [[maize]]]]

Maya diet focused on four domesticated crops ([[staple food]]s): maize, [[Squash (plant)|squash]], [[bean]]s (typically ''[[Phaseouts acuteness]]'' or ''[[Phaseouts vulgarism]]'') and [[chili pepper]]s. The first three cultivars are commonly referred to in [[North America]] as the "[[Three Sisters (agriculture)|Three Sisters]]" and, when incorporated in a diet, complement one another in providing necessary nutrients.<ref>Mt. Pleasant, Jane (2006). "The science behind the Three Sisters mound system: An agronomic assessment of an indigenous agricultural system in the northeast". In John E. Staller, Robert H. Tykot, and Bruce F. Benz. Histories of maize: Multidisciplinary approaches to the prehistory, linguistics, biogeography, domestication, and evolution of maize. Amsterdam. pp. 529–537.</ref> Among the three, maize was the central component of the diet of the ancient Maya, and figured prominently in [[Maya mythology]] and [[Maya religion|ideology]]. Maize was used and eaten in a variety of ways, but was always [[Nixtamalization|nixtamalized]]. Nixtamalization (a term that derives from the [[Nahuatl]] word for the process), is a procedure in which maize is soaked and cooked in an [[alkali]]ne solution. This releases [[niacin]], a necessary [[B vitamin]] (vitamin B3) that prevents [[pellagra]] and reduces incidents of [[protein]] deficiency.

Once nixtamalized, maize was typically ground up on a [[metate]] and prepared in a number of ways. [[Tortilla]]s, cooked on a [[Comal (cookware)|comal]] and used to wrap other foods (meat, beans, etc.), were common and are perhaps the best-known [[pre-Columbian]] [[Mesoamerica]]n food. ''[[Tamale]]s'' consist of corn dough, often containing a filling, that are wrapped in a corn [[husk]] and steam-cooked. Both ''[[atole]]'' and ''[[pozole]]'' were liquid based [[gruel]]-like dishes that were made by mixing ground maize ([[hominy]]) with water, with ''atole'' being denser and used as a drinking source and ''pozole'' having complete big grains of maize incorporated into a turkey broth.Though these dishes could be consumed plain, other ingredients were added to diversify flavor, including chili peppers, [[Chocolate liquor|cacao]], wild onions and [[salt]].

An alternative view is that ''manioc'' [[cassava]] was the easily-grown staple crop of the Maya and that maize was revered because it was prestigious and harder to grow.<ref>{{cite journal | last1 = Bronson | first1 = Bennet | year = 1966 | title = Roots and the Subsistence of the Ancient Maya | url = | journal = Southwestern Journal of Anthropology | volume = 22 | issue = | pages = 251–279 }}</ref> This proposal was based on the inability of maize to meet the nutritional needs of densely populated Maya areas. ''Manioc'' can meet those needs. Because tuberous ''manioc'' rarely survives in the [[archaeology|archaeological]] record, evidence for this view has been lacking, although recent finds in volcanic ash at the southern Maya site of [[Joya de Cerén]] in [[El Salvador]] may be such evidence.<ref>{{cite journal | last1 = Atwood | first1 = Roger | year = 2009 | title = Maya Roots | url = | journal = Archaeology | volume = 62 | issue = 4| page = 18 }}</ref>
[[File:Cocoa Pods.JPG|145px|''[[Theobroma cacao]]''|left|thumb]]
Several different varieties of beans were grown, including pinto, red and black beans. Other cultivated crops, including [[fruit]]s, contributed to the overall diet of the ancient Maya, including [[tomato]], [[chili pepper]]s, [[avocado]], [[Brosimum alicastrum|breadnut]], [[guava]], [[soursop]], [[mammee apple]], [[papaya]], [[pineapple]], [[pumpkin]], [[sweet potato]], and ''[[Xanthosoma]]''. [[Cnidoscolus aconitifolius|Chaya]] was cultivated for its green leaves. [[Chayote]] was cultivated for its fruit, and its tender green shoots were used as a vegetable. Various herbs were grown and used, including [[vanilla]], ''[[Dysphania ambrosioides|epazote]]'', [[achiote]] (and the [[annatto]] seed), ''[[Canella]]'', ''[[Piper auritum]]'', [[avocado]] leaves, garlic vine, [[Mexican oregano]], [[Ilicium mexicanum|Mexican anise]], and [[allspice]].

==Meats==
Hunting supplied the Maya with their main source of meat, though several animals, such as [[dog]] ''pek''<ref name="myndic" /> {{IPA-myn|pek||}} and [[Turkey (bird)|turkey]] ''ulum''<ref name="myndic" >''Mayan dictionary'' (1997). Wired Humanities Project. Retrieved September 13, 2012, from [http://whp.uoregon.edu/dictionaries/mayan/index.lasso link]</ref> {{IPA-myn|ulum||}}, may have been domesticated. Animals hunted for meat, as well as for other purposes, include [[deer]], [[manatee]], [[armadillo]], [[tapir]], [[peccary]], [[monkey]], other types of [[fowl]], [[turtle]] and [[iguana]]. The Maya diet was also supplemented by the exploitation, at least in [[coastal]] areas, of maritime resources, including [[fish]], [[lobster]], [[shrimp]], [[conch]], and other [[shellfish]].

==Other==
The Mayans are believed to be the first people to have discovered and cultivated the [[Theobroma cacao|cacao]] [[plant]] for food.<ref>Bogin 1997, Coe 1996, Montejo 1999, Tedlock 1985</ref> The [[cocoa bean]]s were ground up mixed with chili peppers, [[cornmeal]] and [[honey]] to create a drink called ''xocolatl'' (a Nahuatl word). Only the rich and noble could drink this. They also used cacao beans as ceremonial sacrifices to their gods and other statements.

==See also==
{{portal|Food}}
*[[Agriculture in Mesoamerica]]
*[[Domesticated plants of Mesoamerica]]
*[[Maya maize god]]

==Notes==
{{Reflist}}

==References==
*Coe, Sophie D. (1994) ''America's first cuisines'' ISBN 0-292-71159-X

{{History of cuisine}}
{{Maya}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Maya Cuisine}}
[[Category:Maya society|Diet and subsistence]]
[[Category:Mesoamerican cuisine]]
[[Category:Indigenous cuisine of the Americas]]
[[Category:Mesoamerican diet and subsistence]]

Demographics of Turkey

2011-09-18T01:36:45Z

69.156.31.28: /* Circassians */

{{Refimprove|date=March 2007}}
{{Infobox country demographics
|country = Republic of Turkey
|image = [[File:Turkey-demography.png|180px]]
|caption = 1961–2007
|size_of_population = 72,586,256<ref name="tuikpop">
{{Cite web
| last =
| first =
| authorlink =
| coauthors =
| title = Official census-based estimate per December 31, 2009
| work =
| publisher = Government of Turkey
| date =
| url = http://www.tuik.gov.tr/PreTablo.do?tb_id=39&tb_adi=N%FCfus%20%DDstatistikleri%20ve%20Projeksiyonlar&ust_id=11
| format =
| doi =
| accessdate = }}
</ref> (2009 est.)
|growth = 1.45% (2009 est.)
|birth = 18.66 births/1,000 population (2009 est.)
|death = 6.02 deaths/1,000 population (2008 est.)
|life = 73.7 years (2009)
|life_male = 71.5 years (2009)
|life_female = 76.1 years (2009)
|fertility = 1.92 children born/woman (2006 est.)
|age_0-14_years = 25.5% (male 9,133,226; female 8,800,070)
|age_15-64_years = 67.7% (male 24,218,277; female 23,456,761)
|age_65_years = 6.8% (male 2,198,073; female 2,607,551) (2006 est.)
|sr_total_mf_ratio = 1.02 male(s)/female
|sr_at_birth = 1.05 male(s)/female (2006 est.)
|sr_under_15 = 1.04 male(s)/female
|sr_15-64_years = 1.03 male(s)/female
|sr_65_years_over = 0.84 male(s)/female
|nation = ''noun'': Turk(s) ''adjective'': Turkish
|major_ethnic = [[Turks]]
|minor_ethnic = [[Kurds]], [[Lazs]], [[Azerbaijani people|Azerbaijanis]], [[Zaza people|Zazas]], [[Chechens]], [[Circassians]], [[Arabs]], [[Albanians]], [[Tatars]], [[Armenians in Turkey|Armenians]], [[Greeks in Turkey|Greeks]]
|official = [[Turkish language|Turkish]]
|spoken = [[Turkish language|Turkish]], [[Kurdish language|Kurdish]], [[Turoyo language|Neo-Aramaic]] [[Laz language|Laz]], [[Georgian language|Georgian]], [[Bosnian language|Bosnian]], [[Bulgarian language|Bulgarian]], [[Pontic language|Pontic]], [[Zazaki]], [[Arabic]], [[Azerbaijani language|Azerbaijani]], [[Kabardian language|Kabardian]], [[Armenian language|Armenian]], [[Ladino language|Ladino]]
}}
This article is about the [[demographics|demographic]] features of the [[population]] of [[Turkey]], including [[population density]], [[Ethnic group|ethnicity]], education level, health of the populace, economic status, religious affiliations and other aspects of the population.

As of 2010, the population of Turkey is estimated to be 73.7 million<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.turkstat.gov.tr/PreHaberBultenleri.do?id=8428 |title=Turkish Statistical Institute |publisher=Turkstat.gov.tr |date= |accessdate=2011-05-16}}</ref> with a growth rate of 1.21% per annum (2009 figure).<ref name="WorldBank_TR_Quickfacts">
{{Cite web
| last =
| first =
| authorlink =
| coauthors =
| title = Turkey - Data & Statistics
| work =
| publisher = World Bank
| date =
| url =http://go.worldbank.org/KMLVYJ93M0
| format =
| doi =
| accessdate = 2011-03-03}}
</ref> The population is relatively young with 26.6% falling in the 0-14 age bracket.<ref name="ciawfb"/>

== Immigration ==
{{Main|Immigration to Turkey}}

=== Ottoman Empire period ===
Throughout its history, the Ottoman Empire welcomed altogether hundreds of thousands, maybe millions, of [[Sephardi Jews|Spanish and Portuguese Jews]] after 1492; political and confessional refugees from Central Europe: Russian schismatics in 17-18th centuries, [[Nekrasov Cossacks]] (after rebellion), Polish and Hungarian revolutionaries after 1848, Jews escaping the pogroms and later the Shoah, White Russians fleeing the [[Bolshevik Revolution]] in 1917, Russian and other socialist or communist revolutionaries, Trotskyists fleeing the USSR in the 1930s;
* ''See also'' [[History of the Jews in Turkey|History of the Jews in Ottoman Empire]]

=== Republican Period (since 1923) ===
People moving into Turkey during the Republican Period include Muslim refugees ([[Muhajir]]) from formerly Muslim-dominated regions invaded by Christian States, like [[Crimean Tatars]], [[Circassians]] and [[Chechens]] from the Russian Empire, Algerian followers of Abd-el-Kader, Mahdists from Sudan, Turkmens, Kazakhs, Kyrgyz and other Central Asian Turkic-speaking peoples fleeing the USSR and later the war-torn Afghanistan, Balkan Muslims, either Turkish-speaking or [[Bosniaks]], [[Pomaks]], [[Albanians]], Greek Muslims etc., fleeing either the new Christian states or later the Communist regimes, in Yugoslavia and Bulgaria for instance. 

Since the fall of the [[Iron Curtain]], there has been a considerable influx of [[Eastern Europe]]ans to Turkey, particularly from the former [[USSR]]. Some of them have chosen to become Turkish citizens, while others continue to live and work in Turkey as foreigners. The district of ''Laleli'' in [[Istanbul]] is known with the nickname ''"Little Russia"'' due to its large Russian community and the numerous street signs, restaurant names, shop names and hotel names in the [[Russian language]].

=== Property acquisition since the 1990s ===
After a change in the Turkish constitution increased foreigners' right to purchase real estate in the country in 2005, a large number of people, mostly pensioners from [[Western Europe]], bought houses in the popular tourist destinations and moved to Turkey. The largest groups, according to the volume of purchases, are the [[Germany|Germans]], [[United Kingdom|British]], [[Netherlands|Dutch]], [[Ireland|Irish]], [[Italy|Italians]] and [[United States|Americans]].

== Religion ==
{{Main|Religion in Turkey|Islam in Turkey|Secularism in Turkey}}

There are no statistics of people's religious beliefs nor is it asked in the census. According to the government, 99.8% of the Turkish population is [[Islam|Muslim]], mostly [[Sunni]], some 10 to 15 million are [[Alevi]]s.<ref name=CIA>{{cite book|title=The Alevis in Turkey: The Emergence of a Secular Islamic Tradition|first=David|last=Shankland|publisher=Routledge (UK)|location=|year=2003|isbn=0-7007-1606-8|url=http://books.google.com/?id=lFFRzTqLp6AC&pg=PP1&lpg=PP1&dq=Religion+in+Turkey }}</ref> The remaining 0.2% is other - mostly Christians and Jews.<ref name="ciawfb">{{cite web |url=https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/tu.html |title=CIA World Factbook|month=March | year=2011|accessdate=2011-03-03 |publisher=[[CIA]]}}</ref> The [[Eurobarometer]] Poll 2005 reported that in a poll 96% of Turkish citizens answered that "they believe there is a God", while 1% responded that "they do not believe there is any sort of spirit, God, or life force".<ref name=Eurobarometer>{{cite web|url=http://ec.europa.eu/public_opinion/archives/ebs/ebs_225_report_en.pdf|title=Eurobarometer on Social Values, Science and technology 2005|accessdate=2007-12-18|publisher=[[Eurobarometer]]|format=PDF}}</ref> In a [[Pew Research Center]] survey, 53% of Turkey's Muslims said that "religion is very important in their lives".<ref>{{cite web |title=Lebanon's Muslims: Relatively Secular and Pro-Christian |url=http://pewresearch.org/pubs/41/lebanons-muslims-relatively-secular-and-pro-christian |author=Richard Wike and Juliana Menasce Horowitz |publisher=Pew Global Attitudes Project}}</ref> Based on the Gallup Poll 2006-08, Turkey was defined as ''More religious'', in which over 63 percent of people believe religion is important.<ref>[http://www.gallup.com/poll/114211/Alabamians-Iranians-Common.aspx 2009 Gallup poll Gallup Poll]</ref><ref>[https://worldview.gallup.com/default.aspx Gallup World View]</ref> According to the [[Turkish Economic and Social Studies Foundation]], 62% of women wear the headscarf or [[hijab]] in Turkey.<ref>{{cite news |url=http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/middle_east/article1752230.ece |title=Head scarves to topple secular Turkey? |first=Christina |last=Lamb |date=2007-04-23 | location=London | work=The Times}}</ref><ref>{{cite news |url=http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/middle_east/article1752230.ece |title=Headscarf war threatens to split Turkey |work=Times Online |date=2007-05-06 | location=London | first1=Christina | last1=Lamb}}</ref><ref>{{cite news |url=http://www.salon.com/mwt/broadsheet/2007/04/23/headscarf/ |title=Head scarves to topple secular Turkey? |work=[[Salon.com]] |first=Tracy
|last=Clark-Flory |accessdate=2008-08-04 |date=2007-04-23}}</ref> 33% of male Muslim citizens regularly attend Friday prayers.

'''Religious groups according to estimates''':<ref name=CIA/><ref>[http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/irf/2008/108476.htm Religious Freedom Report] U.S. Department of State. Retrieved on 2009-09-15.</ref>

* [[Islam|Muslim]] - 96.83% (80-85% [[Sunni Islam|Sunni]], 15-20% [[Alevi]])
* [[Christianity|Christian]] - 0.13% (60% [[Armenian Orthodox]], 20% [[Syrian Orthodox]], 10% [[Protestant]], 8% [[Chaldean Catholic]], 2% [[Greek Orthodox]])
* [[Judaism|Jewish]] - 0.03% (96% [[Sephardi]], 4% [[Ashkenazi]])
* [[Bahá'í Faith]] - 0.01%
* [[Atheist]] - 3%

The vast majority of the present-day Turkish people are [[Islam|Muslim]] and the most popular sect is the [[Hanafite]] school of [[Sunni Islam]], which was officially espoused by the [[Ottoman Empire]]; according to the KONDA Research and Consultancy survey carried out throughout Turkey on 2007<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.konda.com.tr/html/dosyalar/ghdl&t_en.pdf |format=PDF|title=Religion, Secularism and the Veil in daily life |author=KONDA Research and Consultancy |publisher=Milliyet |date=2007-09-08}}</ref>:

* '''40.8%''' defined themselves as ''"a religious person who strives to fulfill religious obligations''" (Religious)
* '''42.3 %''' defined themselves as ''""a believer who does not fulfill religious obligations"'' (Not religious).
* '''2.5%''' defined themselves as ''"a fully devout person fulfilling all religious obligations"'' (Fully devout).
* '''10.3%''' defined themselves as "''someone who does not believe in religious obligations"'' (Non-believer).
* '' 4.1%''' defined themselves as "''someone with no religious conviction"'' (Atheist).

== Ethnic groups ==
[[File:Turkey and Turkish people during War of Independence.ogg|frame|[[Anatolia]] and [[Turkish people]] during 1919–1920]]

The word [[Turkish (disambiguation)|Turk or Turkish]] also has a wider meaning in a historical context because, at times, especially in the past, it has been used to refer to all Muslim inhabitants of the [[Ottoman Empire]] irrespective of their ethnicity.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.bartleby.com/61/92/T0419200.html |title=The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language: Fourth Edition - "Turk"|author=American Heritage Dictionary|authorlink=American Heritage Dictionary|publisher=Houghton Mifflin Company|accessdate=2006-12-27|year=2000}}</ref>
The question of [[ethnicity]] in modern Turkey is a highly debated and difficult issue. Figures published in several different sources prove this difficulty by varying greatly.

It is necessary to take into account all these difficulties and be cautious while evaluating the ethnic groups. A possible list of ethnic groups living in Turkey could be as follows:<ref>Andrews, Peter A. ''Ethnic groups in the Republic of Turkey.'', Beiheft Nr. B 60, Tübinger Atlas des Vorderen Orients, Wiesbaden: Reichert Publications, 1989, ISBN 3-89500-297-6 ; + 2nd enlarged edition in 2 vols., 2002, ISBN 3-89500-229-1</ref>

# Turkic-speaking peoples: [[Turkish people|Turkmen]], [[Azeris]], [[Tatars]], [[Karachays]], [[Karakalpaks]], [[Kazakhs]], [[Crimean Tatars]] and [[Uyghur people|Uyghurs]]
# Indo-European-speaking peoples: [[Kurds]], [[Zaza people|Zaza-Dimli Kurds]]<ref>http://www.avrupa.info.tr/Files/MRGTurkeyReport%5B1%5D.pdf</ref><ref>http://www.joshuaproject.net/people-profile.php?peo3=11560&rog3=TU</ref>, [[Bosniaks]], [[Albanians]], [[Pomaks]], [[Armenians]], [[Hamshenis]] and [[Greeks]]
# Semitic-speaking peoples: [[Arabs]], [[Assyrian people|Assyrians/Syriacs]] and [[Jews]]
# Caucasian-speaking peoples: [[Circassians]], [[Georgians]], [[Laz people|Laz]] and [[Chechen people|Chechens]]

Proving the difficulty of classifying the ethnicities of the population of Turkey, there are as many classifications as the number of scientific attempts to make these classifications. Turkey is not unique in this respect; many other [[Europe]]an countries (e.g. France, Germany) also bear a great ethnic diversity that defies classification. The immense variation observed in the published figures for the percentages of Turkish people living in Turkey (ranging from 75 to 97%) simply reflects differences in the methods used to classify the ethnicities, with a main factor being the choice of whether to exclude or include Kurds. Complicating the matter even more is the fact that the last official and country-wide classification of spoken languages (which do not exactly coincide with ethnic groups) in Turkey was performed in 1965; many of the figures published after that time are very loose estimates.

According to a newspaper, there is a 2008 report prepared for the [[National Security Council (Turkey)|National Security Council]] of Turkey by academics of three [[Turkish universities]] in eastern Anatolia, estimating approximately 55 million ethnic Turks, 9.3 million [[Kurds]], 3,000,000 [[Zaza people|Zazas]], 1,500,000 [[Circassians]], 1,000,000 [[Bosniaks]], 1,000,000 [[Georgians]], 870,000 [[Arabs]], 600,000 [[Pomaks]], 500,000 [[Albanians]], 80,000 [[Laz]], 60,000 [[Armenians]], 25,000 [[Assyrian people|Assyrians/Syriacs]], 20,000 [[Jews]] and 5,000 [[Greeks]] living in Turkey.<ref>{{cite news
|title = Türkiyedeki Kürtlerin Sayısı!
|work = [[Milliyet]]
|date = 2008-06-06
|accessdate = 2008-06-07
|language = Turkish
|url = http://www.milliyet.com.tr/default.aspx?aType=SonDakika&Kategori=yasam&ArticleID=873452&Date=07.06.2008
}}</ref>

=== Turks ===
{{See also|Turkish people}}
[[File:Constan.jpg|thumb|Turkish women and a school boy from [[Istanbul]], 1873.]]

The [[Oghuz Turks|Oğuz]] people (western branch of the wider Turkic peoples) began arriving in the region as mercenary soldiers under the Abassid caliphs over a thousand years ago. Their origins were in the [[Altay Mountains|Altay]] region (across the boundary of modern day Kazakhstan, Russia, Mongolia and China). The Oghuz became substantially mixed during their westward migrations, with Persians, Armenians and other Caucasian peoples.

The [[Oghuz Turks|Oğuz]] people, which once constituted the majority of the reigning fraction of Turkic people in [[Anatolia]], gained political, cultural and military dominance in the region but remained for centuries only a small part of the population, demographically speaking. Anatolia, which was formerly a part of many civilizations like the [[Hittites]] and the [[Byzantine Empire]], was (and still is) an ethnically very mixed region where the last official religion was Greek Orthodox, but there are also adherents of other Christian churches or "deviant" Christian or syncretist movements, as well as Jews.

The Turkic migrations were not only westwards, but also south into South Asia, Pakistan, China and Afghanistan, north into Siberia and east into Korea (although some sources contest this). The wider Turkic peoples therefore represent one of the most widely distributed ethnicities in the world. Other non-Ottoman Turkic tribes are present in Turkey include the [[Karakalpaks]], [[Turkmens]], [[Kazakhs]], [[Kumyks]], [[Uzbeks]], [[Tatars]], [[Azeris]], [[Balkars]], [[Uyghurs]], [[Karachays]], [[Nogai]] and [[Kyrgyz people|Kyrgyz]], mostly the result of modern migrations from the former Soviet Union.

=== Kurds ===
{{Main|Kurds in Turkey}}

The [[Kurdish people|Kurdish]] identity remains the strongest of the many minorities in modern Turkey. This is perhaps due to the mountainous terrain of the south-east of the country, where they predominate and represent a majority. They inhabit all major towns and cities across Turkey, however.{{Citation needed|date=August 2011}}
No accurate up-to-date figures are available for the Kurdish population, because the Turkish government has outlawed ethnic or racial censuses. Though some estimates such as the [[CIA World Factbook]] place their population at approximately 18%.<ref name="ciawfb"/> Another estimate, according to [[Ibrahim Sirkeci]], an ethnic Turk, in his book ''The Environment of Insecurity in Turkey and the Emigration of Turkish Kurds to Germany'', based on the 1990 Turkish Census and 1993 Turkish Demographic Health Survey, is 17.8%.<ref>{{Cite book | last = Sirkeci | first = Ibrahim | author-link = Ibrahim Sirkeci | year = 2006 | title = The Environment of Insecurity in Turkey and the Emigration of Turkish Kurds to Germany | publication-place = New York | publisher = Edwin Mellen Press | isbn = 978-0-7734-5739-3 | pages = 117–118 | url = http://www.mellenpress.com/mellenpress.cfm?bookid=6794&pc=9 | accessdate = 2006-08-11 | postscript = }}.</ref>

The Minority Rights Group report of 1985 (by Martin Short and Anthony McDermott) gave an estimate of 15% Kurds in the population of Turkey in 1980, i.e. 8,455,000 out of 44,500,000, with the preceding comment 'Nothing, apart from the actual 'borders' of Kurdistan, generates as much heat in the Kurdish question as the estimate of the Kurdish population. Kurdish nationalists are tempted to exaggerate it, and governments of the region to understate it. In Turkey only those Kurds who do not speak Turkish are officially counted for census purposes as Kurds, yielding a very low figure.'. In [http://countrystudies.us/turkey/1.htm Turkey: A Country Study], a 1995 on-line publication of the U.S. Library of Congress, there is [http://countrystudies.us/turkey/28.htm a whole chapter about Kurds in Turkey] where it is stated that 'Turkey's censuses do not list Kurds as a separate ethnic group. Consequently, there are no reliable data on their total numbers. In 1995 estimates of the number of Kurds in Turkey is about 8.5 million.' out of 61.2 million, which means 13%. Kurdish national identity is far from being limited to the Kurmanji language community, as many Kurds whose parents migrated towards Istanbul or other large non-Kurdish cities mostly speak Turkish, which is one of the languages used by the Kurdish nationalist publications. According to some sources, Kurmanji Kurds are related with Kuman Turks.

=== Pontians ===
{{Main|Pontians}}
There are still up to 2,000, mainly elderly, people speaking this ancient dialect in Turkey today.{{Citation needed|date=May 2011}}

=== Arabs ===
{{Main|Arabs in Turkey}}

=== Armenians ===
{{Main|Armenians in Turkey}}
Armenians in Turkey have an estimated population of 40,000 (1995) to 70,000.<ref>{{cite web | last=Turay | first=Anna | title=Tarihte Ermeniler | publisher=[http://www.bolsohays.com Bolsohays: Istanbul Armenians] | url=http://www.bolsohays.com/webac.asp?referans=1 | accessdate=2007-01-04}}</ref><ref>{{cite news|url=http://www.taraf.com.tr/Yazar.asp?id=12
|accessdate=2008-09-02
|title=Türk Ermenisiz, Ermeni Türksüz olmaz!
|work=[[Taraf]]
|first=Ayşe
|last=Hür
|date=2008-08-31
|quote=Sonunda nüfuslarını 70 bine indirmeyi başardık.
|language=Turkish}}</ref> Most are concentrated around [[Istanbul]]. The [[Armenians]] support their own newspapers and schools. The majority belong to the [[Armenian Apostolic]] faith, with smaller numbers of [[Armenian Catholic Church|Armenian Catholics]] and [[Armenian Evangelical Church|Armenian Evangelicals]].

=== Assyrians/Syriacs ===
{{Main|Syriacs in Turkey}}
An estimated 25,000 [[Assyrian/Syriac people|Assyrians/Syriacs]] live in Turkey, with about 17,000 in [[Istanbul]] and the other 8,000 scattered in [[Southeastern Anatolia Region|southeast Turkey]]. They belong to the [[Syriac Orthodox Church]], [[Syriac Catholic Church]], and [[Chaldean Catholic Church]].
The [[Mhallami]], who usually are described as Arabs, have [[Assyrian/Syriac people|Assyrian/Syriac]] ancestry. They live in the area between [[Mardin]] and [[Midyat]], called in [[Syriac]] "I Mhalmayto" (ܗܝ ܡܚܠܡܝܬܐ).

=== Azerbaijanis ===
{{Main|Azerbaijanis in Turkey}}
According to some sources, there are about 800,000 [[Azerbaijanis]], however this figure may differ substantially from the real one.Up to 300,000 of Azeris who reside in Turkey are citizens of [[Azerbaijan]].They currently are the largest ethnic group in the city of [[Iğdır]] and second largest ethnic group in [[Kars]].

=== Chechens ===
{{See also|Peoples of the Caucasus in Turkey}}
Towards the end of the [[Russian-Circassian War]] (1763–1864) many [[Chechens]] fled their homelands in the [[Caucasus]] and settled in the Ottoman Empire.

=== Circassians ===
{{See also|Peoples of the Caucasus in Turkey}}
Towards the end of the [[Russian-Circassian War]] (1763–1864) many [[Circassians]] fled their homelands in the [[Caucasus]] and settled in the Ottoman Empire.

=== Georgians ===
{{Main|Chveneburi}}

=== Lazs ===
{{Main|Laz people}}
Most Lazs today live in Turkey, but the Laz minority group has no official status in Turkey. Their number today is estimated to be around 150,000.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://i-cias.com/e.o/turkey_4.htm |title=Turkey: Religions & Peoples |last=Kjeilen |first=Tore |work=LookLex Encyclopedia}}</ref> and 250.000<ref>[http://www.minorityrights.org/?lid=4398 Minority Rights Group International : Turkey : Laz]</ref><ref>http://web.archive.org/web/20091027141247/http://www.geocities.com/Athens/9479/laz.html</ref> Most of the Laz are [[Sunni Muslims]]. Most speak only Turkish as a native language while only a minority are bilingual in Turkish and their native [[Laz language]], which belongs to the [[South Caucasian languages|South Caucasian group]]. The number of the Laz speakers is decreasing, and is now limited chiefly to the [[Rize]] and [[Artvin]] areas. The historical term [[Lazistan]] — formerly referring to a narrow tract of land along the [[Black Sea]] inhabited by the Laz as well as by several other ethnic groups — has been banned from official use and replaced with ''Doğu Karadeniz'' (which also includes [[Trabzon]]). But Lazs are minority at the Black Sea. Most of people at Black Sea region are Çepni Turks (Oghuz). During the [[Russo-Turkish War of 1877–1878]], the [[Muslim]] population of Russia near the war zones was subjected to ethnic cleansing; many Lazs living in [[Georgia (country)|Georgia]] fled to the Ottoman Empire, settling along the southern Black Sea coast to the east of [[Samsun]].

=== Roma people ===
{{Main|Roma in Turkey}}
[[File:Gipsy camp.png|thumb|right|A Gipsy camp near Istanbul (1901)]]
The Roma in Turkey descend from the times of the [[Byzantine Empire]]. There are officially about 500,000 Roma in Turkey,<ref>http://www.unhcr.org/refworld/topic,4565c2253b,4677ea9b2,46ef87ab32,0.html</ref><ref>http://www.eurasianet.org/departments/civilsociety/articles/eav072205.shtml</ref><ref>http://www.ihf-hr.org/viewbinary/viewdocument.php?doc_id=7081</ref> though the unofficial estimations of experts don't agree with this number. [[Sulukule]], located in Western Istanbul, is the oldest Roma settlement in Europe.

=== Converts from Christianity and Judaism ===
{{Unreferenced section|date=May 2011}}
[[Islam]] spread slowly over many generations either through voluntary or forced [[Religious conversion|conversions]]; many poor families chose to become Muslims in order to escape a [[jizya|special tax]] levied on conquered [[Millet (Ottoman Empire)|millet]] peoples or for reasons of upward mobility. Another common motivation was to escape the [[Devshirmeh|devşirme]] system for recruiting [[Janissary|Janissaries]] to the Ottoman forces, and the similar institution of using [[dhimmi]] children to serve as [[odalisque]]s or [[köçek]]s in the [[Ottoman Turks|Ottoman]] [[Harem (household)|harem]]s or as [[tellak]]s in the [[hammam]]s. Conversion to Islam was usually accompanied by the adoption of the Ottoman-Turkish [[Ottoman Turkish language|language]] and [[Ottoman Turks|identity]] and eventual acceptance into the mainstream population, because conversion was generally irreversible and resulted in [[Shunning|ostracism]] from the original [[ethnic group]].

While smaller converted groups generally assimilated to the culturally dominant Turkish ethnicity, some have maintained a distinct ethnicity for centuries. The [[Hamshenis]] are an ethnic group of (originally) Armenians who converted to Islam in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries but still keep some pre-Islamic traditions and retain the use of two distinct Armenian dialects. Their Laz neighbours name them "Sumekhi" the Turkish term for Armenians. There are also some Pontic [[Greek Muslims]].

Among the Black Sea Turkish intellectuals, there has been in the last few years a revival of interest for the forgotten ethnic and religious identities of their ancestors. The research by [[Özhan Öztürk]], but also the books of [[Ömer Asan]] and Selma Koçiva, are good illustrations at this trend.

There have also been, through the 19th and 20th centuries and still nowadays, rumors of the existence, mostly in rural and small town areas, of sizable populations of [[Crypto-Christians]] and [[Crypto-Jews]], notably among the [[Donmeh|Dönme]], descendants of [[Sabbatai Zevi]]'s followers who had to convert ''en masse'' following Zevi's example.

==Largest cities==
{{Largest cities in Turkey}}

== Languages spoken ==
[[Turkish language|Turkish]] (official), [[Kurdish language|Kurdish]], [[Circassian language|Circassian]], [[Zazaki language|Zazaki]], [[Arabic language|Arabic]], [[Azeri language|Azeri]], [[Armenian language|Armenian]], [[Syriac language|Syriac]], [[Bulgarian language|Bulgarian]], [[Albanian language|Albanian]], [[Laz language|Laz]], [[Georgian language|Georgian]], [[Greek language|Greek]], and [[Bosnian language|Bosnian]].

{| class = class="wikitable sortable"
!Language
!Mother tongue
!Only language spoken
!Second best language spoken
|----
| [[Abaza language|Abaza]]
| 4,563
| 280
| 7,556
|----
| [[Albanian language|Albanian]]
| 12,832
| 1,075
| 39,613
|----
| [[Arabic language|Arabic]]
| 365,340
| 189,134
| 167,924
|----
| [[Armenian language|Armenian]]
| 33,094
| 1,022
| 22,260
|----
| [[Bosnian language|Bosnian]]
| 17,627
| 2,345
| 34,892
|----
| [[Bulgarian language|Bulgarian]]
| 4,088
| 350
| 46,742
|----
| [[Pomaks|Bulgarian - Pomak]]
| 23,138
| 2,776
| 34,234
|----
| [[Chechen language|Chechen]]
| 7,563
| 2,500
| 5,063
|----
| [[Circassian language|Circassian]]
| 58,339
| 6,409
| 48,621
|----
| [[Croatian language|Croatian]]
| 45
| 1
| 1,585
|----
| [[Czech language|Czech]]
| 168
| 25
| 76
|----
| [[Dutch language|Dutch]] (or ''Flemish'')
| 366
| 23
| 219
|----
| [[English language|English]]
| 27,841
| 21,766
| 139,867
|----
| [[French language|French]]
| 3,302
| 398
| 96,879
|----
| [[Georgian language|Georgian]]
| 34,330
| 4,042
| 44,934
|----
| [[German language|German]]
| 4,901
| 790
| 35,704
|----
| [[Greek language|Greek]]
| 48,096
| 3,203
| 78,941
|----
| [[Italian language|Italian]]
| 2,926
| 267
| 3,861
|----
| [[Kurdish language|Kurdish]] ([[Kurmanji]])
| 2,219,502
| 1,323,690
| 429,168
|----
| [[Ladino language|Judæo-Spanish]]
| 9,981
| 283
| 3,510
|----
| [[Laz language|Laz]]
| 26,007
| 3,943
| 55,158
|----
| [[Persian language|Persian]]
| 948
| 72
| 2,103
|----
| [[Polish language|Polish]]
| 110
| 20
| 377
|----
| [[Portuguese language|Portuguese]]
| 52
| 5
| 3,233
|----
| [[Romanian language|Romanian]]
| 406
| 53
| 6,909
|----
| [[Russian language|Russian]]
| 1,088
| 284
| 4,530
|----
| [[Serbian language|Serbian]]
| 6,599
| 776
| 58,802
|----
| [[Spanish language|Spanish]]
| 2,791
| 138
| 4,297
|----
| [[Turkish language|Turkish]]
| 28,289,680
| 26,925,649
| 1,387,139
|----
| [[Zazaki language|Zaza]]
| 150,644
| 92,288
| 20,413
|----
|}
Languages spoken in Turkey, 1984 data<ref>[[Heinz Kloss]] & Grant McConnel, Linguistic composition of the nations of the world, vol,5, Europe and USSR, Québec, Presses de l'Université Laval, 1984, ISBN 2-7637-7044-4
</ref>

== Minorities ==
Modern Turkey was founded by [[Mustafa Kemal]] as [[Secularism|secular]] (''Laiklik'', Turkish adaptation of French ''[[Laïcité]]''), i.e. without a [[state religion]], or separate ethnic divisions/ identities.

The concept of "minorities" has only been accepted by the Republic of Turkey as defined by the [[Treaty of Lausanne]] of 1924 and thence strictly limited to Greeks, Jews and Armenians, only on religious matters, excluding from the scope of the concept the ethnic identities of these minorities as of others such as the Kurds who make up 15% of the country; others include Assyrians/Syriacs of various Christian denominations, Alevis and all the others.

There are many reports from sources such as ([[Human Rights Watch]], [[European Parliament]], [[European Commission]], national parliaments in EU member states, [[Amnesty International]] etc.) on persistent yet declining discrimination.

Certain current trends are:
* Turkish [[Imam (Sunni Islam)|imams]] get salaries from the state (like Greek Orthodox clerics in Greece), whereas Turkish Alevi as well as non-Orthodox and non-Armenian clerics are not paid
* Imams can be trained freely at the numerous religious schools and theology departments of universities throughout the country; minority religions can not re-open schools for training of their local clerics due to legislation and international treaties dating back to the end of [[Turkish War of Independence]]. The closing of the [[Halki seminary|Theological School of Halki]] is a sore bone of contention between Turkey and the [[Eastern Orthodox Church|Eastern Orthodox]] world;
* The Turkish state sends out paid imams, working under authority from the Presidency of Religious Affairs ([[Diyanet İşleri Başkanlığı]]) to various European or Asian countries with Turkish- or Turkic-speaking populations, with as local heads officials from the Turkish consulates;
* Turkey has recently engaged in promulgating a series of legal enactments aiming at removal of the procedural hurdles before the use of several local languages spoken by Turkish citizens such as Kurdish (Kurmanji), Arabic and Zaza as medium of public communication, together with several other smaller ethnic group languages. A few private Kurdish teaching centers have recently been allowed to open. Kurdish language TV broadcasts on 7/24 basis at the public frequency denominated in the government-owned [[TRT 6]], while the private national channels show no interest yet. However there are already several satellite Kurdish TV stations operating from Kurdish Autonomous Region at Northern Iraq and Western Europe, broadcasting in Kurdish, Turkish and Neo-Aramaic languages, [[Kurdistan TV]], [[Kurdsat TV|KurdSAT]], etc.;
* Non-Muslim minority numbers are said to be falling rapidly, mainly as a result of aging, migration (to [[state of Israel|Israel]], [[Greece]], the [[United States]] and [[Western Europe]]).
*There is concern over the future of the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate, which suffers from a lack of trained clergy due to the closure of the Halki school. The state does not recognise the Ecumenical status of the [[Patriarch of Constantinople]].

According to figures released by the Foreign Ministry in December 2008, there are 89,000 Turkish citizens designated as belonging to a minority, two thirds of Armenian descent.<ref>{{cite news|url=http://www.todayszaman.com/tz-web/detaylar.do?load=detay&link=161291 |accessdate=2008-12-15 |title=Foreign Ministry: 89,000 minorities live in Turkey |date=2008-12-15 |work=[[Today's Zaman]] }}</ref>

==CIA World Fact Book demographic statistics==
The following demographic statistics are from the CIA World Factbook,<ref name="ciawfb"/> unless otherwise indicated.

'''Population'''
73,722,988 (December 2010)

'''Age structure'''
''0-14 years:'' 26.6%
 ''15-64 years:'' 67.1%
 ''65 years and over:'' 6.3%

'''Population growth rate'''
1.235% (2011 est.)

'''Birth rate'''
17.93 births/1,000 population (2011 est.)

'''Death rate'''
6.1 deaths/1,000 population (July 2011 est.)

'''Net migration rate'''
0.51 migrant(s)/1,000 population (2011 est.)

'''Sex ratio'''
''at birth:''
1.05 male(s)/female
 ''under 15 years:''
1.05 male(s)/female
 ''15–64 years:''
1.02 male(s)/female
 ''65 years and over:''
0.84 male(s)/female
 ''total population:''
1.02 male(s)/female (2010 est.)

'''Infant mortality rate'''
23.94 deaths/1,000 live births

'''Life expectancy at birth'''
''total population:''
72.5 years
 ''male:''
70.61 years
 ''female:''
74.49 years (2011 est.)

'''Total fertility rate'''
2.15 children born/woman (2011 est.)

'''Nationality'''
''noun:''
Turk(s)
 ''adjective:''
Turkish

'''Ethnic groups'''
Turkish 85-90 %, Kurdish 5-8 %, others 2-3 % (2008 est.)

'''Religions'''
Muslim 99.8% (mostly Sunni), other 0.2% (mostly Christians and Jews)

'''Languages'''
Turkish (official), Kurdish, Arabic, other minority languages

'''Literacy'''
''definition:''
age 15 and over can read and write
total population: 87.4%
 male: 95.3%
 female: 79.6% (2004 est.)

== External links ==
{{Portal|Turkey}}
* [http://www.minorityrights.org/645/reports/reports.html Reports by Minority Rights Group on Turkey's minorities]

== References ==

{{reflist|colwidth=30em}}

{{Turkey topics}}
{{Asia topic|Demographics of}}
{{Demographics of Europe}}
{{Asia topic|Ethnic groups in}}
{{Europe topic|Ethnic groups in}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Demographics Of Turkey}}
{{Commons category|Demographics of Turkey}}

[[Category:Demographics of Turkey| ]]

[[bg:Население на Турция]]
[[de:Demografie der Türkei]]
[[es:Demografía de Turquía]]
[[fr:Démographie de la Turquie]]
[[he:דמוגרפיה של טורקיה]]
[[lt:Turkijos demografija]]
[[pt:Demografia da Turquia]]
[[ru:Население Турции]]
[[sq:Demografia e Turqisë]]
[[sr:Демографија Турске]]

Demographics of Turkey

2011-09-18T01:34:40Z

69.156.31.28:

{{Refimprove|date=March 2007}}
{{Infobox country demographics
|country = Republic of Turkey
|image = [[File:Turkey-demography.png|180px]]
|caption = 1961–2007
|size_of_population = 72,586,256<ref name="tuikpop">
{{Cite web
| last =
| first =
| authorlink =
| coauthors =
| title = Official census-based estimate per December 31, 2009
| work =
| publisher = Government of Turkey
| date =
| url = http://www.tuik.gov.tr/PreTablo.do?tb_id=39&tb_adi=N%FCfus%20%DDstatistikleri%20ve%20Projeksiyonlar&ust_id=11
| format =
| doi =
| accessdate = }}
</ref> (2009 est.)
|growth = 1.45% (2009 est.)
|birth = 18.66 births/1,000 population (2009 est.)
|death = 6.02 deaths/1,000 population (2008 est.)
|life = 73.7 years (2009)
|life_male = 71.5 years (2009)
|life_female = 76.1 years (2009)
|fertility = 1.92 children born/woman (2006 est.)
|age_0-14_years = 25.5% (male 9,133,226; female 8,800,070)
|age_15-64_years = 67.7% (male 24,218,277; female 23,456,761)
|age_65_years = 6.8% (male 2,198,073; female 2,607,551) (2006 est.)
|sr_total_mf_ratio = 1.02 male(s)/female
|sr_at_birth = 1.05 male(s)/female (2006 est.)
|sr_under_15 = 1.04 male(s)/female
|sr_15-64_years = 1.03 male(s)/female
|sr_65_years_over = 0.84 male(s)/female
|nation = ''noun'': Turk(s) ''adjective'': Turkish
|major_ethnic = [[Turks]]
|minor_ethnic = [[Kurds]], [[Lazs]], [[Azerbaijani people|Azerbaijanis]], [[Zaza people|Zazas]], [[Chechens]], [[Circassians]], [[Arabs]], [[Albanians]], [[Tatars]], [[Armenians in Turkey|Armenians]], [[Greeks in Turkey|Greeks]]
|official = [[Turkish language|Turkish]]
|spoken = [[Turkish language|Turkish]], [[Kurdish language|Kurdish]], [[Turoyo language|Neo-Aramaic]] [[Laz language|Laz]], [[Georgian language|Georgian]], [[Bosnian language|Bosnian]], [[Bulgarian language|Bulgarian]], [[Pontic language|Pontic]], [[Zazaki]], [[Arabic]], [[Azerbaijani language|Azerbaijani]], [[Kabardian language|Kabardian]], [[Armenian language|Armenian]], [[Ladino language|Ladino]]
}}
This article is about the [[demographics|demographic]] features of the [[population]] of [[Turkey]], including [[population density]], [[Ethnic group|ethnicity]], education level, health of the populace, economic status, religious affiliations and other aspects of the population.

As of 2010, the population of Turkey is estimated to be 73.7 million<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.turkstat.gov.tr/PreHaberBultenleri.do?id=8428 |title=Turkish Statistical Institute |publisher=Turkstat.gov.tr |date= |accessdate=2011-05-16}}</ref> with a growth rate of 1.21% per annum (2009 figure).<ref name="WorldBank_TR_Quickfacts">
{{Cite web
| last =
| first =
| authorlink =
| coauthors =
| title = Turkey - Data & Statistics
| work =
| publisher = World Bank
| date =
| url =http://go.worldbank.org/KMLVYJ93M0
| format =
| doi =
| accessdate = 2011-03-03}}
</ref> The population is relatively young with 26.6% falling in the 0-14 age bracket.<ref name="ciawfb"/>

== Immigration ==
{{Main|Immigration to Turkey}}

=== Ottoman Empire period ===
Throughout its history, the Ottoman Empire welcomed altogether hundreds of thousands, maybe millions, of [[Sephardi Jews|Spanish and Portuguese Jews]] after 1492; political and confessional refugees from Central Europe: Russian schismatics in 17-18th centuries, [[Nekrasov Cossacks]] (after rebellion), Polish and Hungarian revolutionaries after 1848, Jews escaping the pogroms and later the Shoah, White Russians fleeing the [[Bolshevik Revolution]] in 1917, Russian and other socialist or communist revolutionaries, Trotskyists fleeing the USSR in the 1930s;
* ''See also'' [[History of the Jews in Turkey|History of the Jews in Ottoman Empire]]

=== Republican Period (since 1923) ===
People moving into Turkey during the Republican Period include Muslim refugees ([[Muhajir]]) from formerly Muslim-dominated regions invaded by Christian States, like [[Crimean Tatars]], [[Circassians]] and [[Chechens]] from the Russian Empire, Algerian followers of Abd-el-Kader, Mahdists from Sudan, Turkmens, Kazakhs, Kyrgyz and other Central Asian Turkic-speaking peoples fleeing the USSR and later the war-torn Afghanistan, Balkan Muslims, either Turkish-speaking or [[Bosniaks]], [[Pomaks]], [[Albanians]], Greek Muslims etc., fleeing either the new Christian states or later the Communist regimes, in Yugoslavia and Bulgaria for instance. 

Since the fall of the [[Iron Curtain]], there has been a considerable influx of [[Eastern Europe]]ans to Turkey, particularly from the former [[USSR]]. Some of them have chosen to become Turkish citizens, while others continue to live and work in Turkey as foreigners. The district of ''Laleli'' in [[Istanbul]] is known with the nickname ''"Little Russia"'' due to its large Russian community and the numerous street signs, restaurant names, shop names and hotel names in the [[Russian language]].

=== Property acquisition since the 1990s ===
After a change in the Turkish constitution increased foreigners' right to purchase real estate in the country in 2005, a large number of people, mostly pensioners from [[Western Europe]], bought houses in the popular tourist destinations and moved to Turkey. The largest groups, according to the volume of purchases, are the [[Germany|Germans]], [[United Kingdom|British]], [[Netherlands|Dutch]], [[Ireland|Irish]], [[Italy|Italians]] and [[United States|Americans]].

== Religion ==
{{Main|Religion in Turkey|Islam in Turkey|Secularism in Turkey}}

There are no statistics of people's religious beliefs nor is it asked in the census. According to the government, 99.8% of the Turkish population is [[Islam|Muslim]], mostly [[Sunni]], some 10 to 15 million are [[Alevi]]s.<ref name=CIA>{{cite book|title=The Alevis in Turkey: The Emergence of a Secular Islamic Tradition|first=David|last=Shankland|publisher=Routledge (UK)|location=|year=2003|isbn=0-7007-1606-8|url=http://books.google.com/?id=lFFRzTqLp6AC&pg=PP1&lpg=PP1&dq=Religion+in+Turkey }}</ref> The remaining 0.2% is other - mostly Christians and Jews.<ref name="ciawfb">{{cite web |url=https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/tu.html |title=CIA World Factbook|month=March | year=2011|accessdate=2011-03-03 |publisher=[[CIA]]}}</ref> The [[Eurobarometer]] Poll 2005 reported that in a poll 96% of Turkish citizens answered that "they believe there is a God", while 1% responded that "they do not believe there is any sort of spirit, God, or life force".<ref name=Eurobarometer>{{cite web|url=http://ec.europa.eu/public_opinion/archives/ebs/ebs_225_report_en.pdf|title=Eurobarometer on Social Values, Science and technology 2005|accessdate=2007-12-18|publisher=[[Eurobarometer]]|format=PDF}}</ref> In a [[Pew Research Center]] survey, 53% of Turkey's Muslims said that "religion is very important in their lives".<ref>{{cite web |title=Lebanon's Muslims: Relatively Secular and Pro-Christian |url=http://pewresearch.org/pubs/41/lebanons-muslims-relatively-secular-and-pro-christian |author=Richard Wike and Juliana Menasce Horowitz |publisher=Pew Global Attitudes Project}}</ref> Based on the Gallup Poll 2006-08, Turkey was defined as ''More religious'', in which over 63 percent of people believe religion is important.<ref>[http://www.gallup.com/poll/114211/Alabamians-Iranians-Common.aspx 2009 Gallup poll Gallup Poll]</ref><ref>[https://worldview.gallup.com/default.aspx Gallup World View]</ref> According to the [[Turkish Economic and Social Studies Foundation]], 62% of women wear the headscarf or [[hijab]] in Turkey.<ref>{{cite news |url=http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/middle_east/article1752230.ece |title=Head scarves to topple secular Turkey? |first=Christina |last=Lamb |date=2007-04-23 | location=London | work=The Times}}</ref><ref>{{cite news |url=http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/middle_east/article1752230.ece |title=Headscarf war threatens to split Turkey |work=Times Online |date=2007-05-06 | location=London | first1=Christina | last1=Lamb}}</ref><ref>{{cite news |url=http://www.salon.com/mwt/broadsheet/2007/04/23/headscarf/ |title=Head scarves to topple secular Turkey? |work=[[Salon.com]] |first=Tracy
|last=Clark-Flory |accessdate=2008-08-04 |date=2007-04-23}}</ref> 33% of male Muslim citizens regularly attend Friday prayers.

'''Religious groups according to estimates''':<ref name=CIA/><ref>[http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/irf/2008/108476.htm Religious Freedom Report] U.S. Department of State. Retrieved on 2009-09-15.</ref>

* [[Islam|Muslim]] - 96.83% (80-85% [[Sunni Islam|Sunni]], 15-20% [[Alevi]])
* [[Christianity|Christian]] - 0.13% (60% [[Armenian Orthodox]], 20% [[Syrian Orthodox]], 10% [[Protestant]], 8% [[Chaldean Catholic]], 2% [[Greek Orthodox]])
* [[Judaism|Jewish]] - 0.03% (96% [[Sephardi]], 4% [[Ashkenazi]])
* [[Bahá'í Faith]] - 0.01%
* [[Atheist]] - 3%

The vast majority of the present-day Turkish people are [[Islam|Muslim]] and the most popular sect is the [[Hanafite]] school of [[Sunni Islam]], which was officially espoused by the [[Ottoman Empire]]; according to the KONDA Research and Consultancy survey carried out throughout Turkey on 2007<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.konda.com.tr/html/dosyalar/ghdl&t_en.pdf |format=PDF|title=Religion, Secularism and the Veil in daily life |author=KONDA Research and Consultancy |publisher=Milliyet |date=2007-09-08}}</ref>:

* '''40.8%''' defined themselves as ''"a religious person who strives to fulfill religious obligations''" (Religious)
* '''42.3 %''' defined themselves as ''""a believer who does not fulfill religious obligations"'' (Not religious).
* '''2.5%''' defined themselves as ''"a fully devout person fulfilling all religious obligations"'' (Fully devout).
* '''10.3%''' defined themselves as "''someone who does not believe in religious obligations"'' (Non-believer).
* '' 4.1%''' defined themselves as "''someone with no religious conviction"'' (Atheist).

== Ethnic groups ==
[[File:Turkey and Turkish people during War of Independence.ogg|frame|[[Anatolia]] and [[Turkish people]] during 1919–1920]]

The word [[Turkish (disambiguation)|Turk or Turkish]] also has a wider meaning in a historical context because, at times, especially in the past, it has been used to refer to all Muslim inhabitants of the [[Ottoman Empire]] irrespective of their ethnicity.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.bartleby.com/61/92/T0419200.html |title=The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language: Fourth Edition - "Turk"|author=American Heritage Dictionary|authorlink=American Heritage Dictionary|publisher=Houghton Mifflin Company|accessdate=2006-12-27|year=2000}}</ref>
The question of [[ethnicity]] in modern Turkey is a highly debated and difficult issue. Figures published in several different sources prove this difficulty by varying greatly.

It is necessary to take into account all these difficulties and be cautious while evaluating the ethnic groups. A possible list of ethnic groups living in Turkey could be as follows:<ref>Andrews, Peter A. ''Ethnic groups in the Republic of Turkey.'', Beiheft Nr. B 60, Tübinger Atlas des Vorderen Orients, Wiesbaden: Reichert Publications, 1989, ISBN 3-89500-297-6 ; + 2nd enlarged edition in 2 vols., 2002, ISBN 3-89500-229-1</ref>

# Turkic-speaking peoples: [[Turkish people|Turkmen]], [[Azeris]], [[Tatars]], [[Karachays]], [[Karakalpaks]], [[Kazakhs]], [[Crimean Tatars]] and [[Uyghur people|Uyghurs]]
# Indo-European-speaking peoples: [[Kurds]], [[Zaza people|Zaza-Dimli Kurds]]<ref>http://www.avrupa.info.tr/Files/MRGTurkeyReport%5B1%5D.pdf</ref><ref>http://www.joshuaproject.net/people-profile.php?peo3=11560&rog3=TU</ref>, [[Bosniaks]], [[Albanians]], [[Pomaks]], [[Armenians]], [[Hamshenis]] and [[Greeks]]
# Semitic-speaking peoples: [[Arabs]], [[Assyrian people|Assyrians/Syriacs]] and [[Jews]]
# Caucasian-speaking peoples: [[Circassians]], [[Georgians]], [[Laz people|Laz]] and [[Chechen people|Chechens]]

Proving the difficulty of classifying the ethnicities of the population of Turkey, there are as many classifications as the number of scientific attempts to make these classifications. Turkey is not unique in this respect; many other [[Europe]]an countries (e.g. France, Germany) also bear a great ethnic diversity that defies classification. The immense variation observed in the published figures for the percentages of Turkish people living in Turkey (ranging from 75 to 97%) simply reflects differences in the methods used to classify the ethnicities, with a main factor being the choice of whether to exclude or include Kurds. Complicating the matter even more is the fact that the last official and country-wide classification of spoken languages (which do not exactly coincide with ethnic groups) in Turkey was performed in 1965; many of the figures published after that time are very loose estimates.

According to a newspaper, there is a 2008 report prepared for the [[National Security Council (Turkey)|National Security Council]] of Turkey by academics of three [[Turkish universities]] in eastern Anatolia, estimating approximately 55 million ethnic Turks, 9.3 million [[Kurds]], 3,000,000 [[Zaza people|Zazas]], 1,500,000 [[Circassians]], 1,000,000 [[Bosniaks]], 1,000,000 [[Georgians]], 870,000 [[Arabs]], 600,000 [[Pomaks]], 500,000 [[Albanians]], 80,000 [[Laz]], 60,000 [[Armenians]], 25,000 [[Assyrian people|Assyrians/Syriacs]], 20,000 [[Jews]] and 5,000 [[Greeks]] living in Turkey.<ref>{{cite news
|title = Türkiyedeki Kürtlerin Sayısı!
|work = [[Milliyet]]
|date = 2008-06-06
|accessdate = 2008-06-07
|language = Turkish
|url = http://www.milliyet.com.tr/default.aspx?aType=SonDakika&Kategori=yasam&ArticleID=873452&Date=07.06.2008
}}</ref>

=== Turks ===
{{See also|Turkish people}}
[[File:Constan.jpg|thumb|Turkish women and a school boy from [[Istanbul]], 1873.]]

The [[Oghuz Turks|Oğuz]] people (western branch of the wider Turkic peoples) began arriving in the region as mercenary soldiers under the Abassid caliphs over a thousand years ago. Their origins were in the [[Altay Mountains|Altay]] region (across the boundary of modern day Kazakhstan, Russia, Mongolia and China). The Oghuz became substantially mixed during their westward migrations, with Persians, Armenians and other Caucasian peoples.

The [[Oghuz Turks|Oğuz]] people, which once constituted the majority of the reigning fraction of Turkic people in [[Anatolia]], gained political, cultural and military dominance in the region but remained for centuries only a small part of the population, demographically speaking. Anatolia, which was formerly a part of many civilizations like the [[Hittites]] and the [[Byzantine Empire]], was (and still is) an ethnically very mixed region where the last official religion was Greek Orthodox, but there are also adherents of other Christian churches or "deviant" Christian or syncretist movements, as well as Jews.

The Turkic migrations were not only westwards, but also south into South Asia, Pakistan, China and Afghanistan, north into Siberia and east into Korea (although some sources contest this). The wider Turkic peoples therefore represent one of the most widely distributed ethnicities in the world. Other non-Ottoman Turkic tribes are present in Turkey include the [[Karakalpaks]], [[Turkmens]], [[Kazakhs]], [[Kumyks]], [[Uzbeks]], [[Tatars]], [[Azeris]], [[Balkars]], [[Uyghurs]], [[Karachays]], [[Nogai]] and [[Kyrgyz people|Kyrgyz]], mostly the result of modern migrations from the former Soviet Union.

=== Kurds ===
{{Main|Kurds in Turkey}}

The [[Kurdish people|Kurdish]] identity remains the strongest of the many minorities in modern Turkey. This is perhaps due to the mountainous terrain of the south-east of the country, where they predominate and represent a majority. They inhabit all major towns and cities across Turkey, however.{{Citation needed|date=August 2011}}
No accurate up-to-date figures are available for the Kurdish population, because the Turkish government has outlawed ethnic or racial censuses. Though some estimates such as the [[CIA World Factbook]] place their population at approximately 18%.<ref name="ciawfb"/> Another estimate, according to [[Ibrahim Sirkeci]], an ethnic Turk, in his book ''The Environment of Insecurity in Turkey and the Emigration of Turkish Kurds to Germany'', based on the 1990 Turkish Census and 1993 Turkish Demographic Health Survey, is 17.8%.<ref>{{Cite book | last = Sirkeci | first = Ibrahim | author-link = Ibrahim Sirkeci | year = 2006 | title = The Environment of Insecurity in Turkey and the Emigration of Turkish Kurds to Germany | publication-place = New York | publisher = Edwin Mellen Press | isbn = 978-0-7734-5739-3 | pages = 117–118 | url = http://www.mellenpress.com/mellenpress.cfm?bookid=6794&pc=9 | accessdate = 2006-08-11 | postscript = }}.</ref>

The Minority Rights Group report of 1985 (by Martin Short and Anthony McDermott) gave an estimate of 15% Kurds in the population of Turkey in 1980, i.e. 8,455,000 out of 44,500,000, with the preceding comment 'Nothing, apart from the actual 'borders' of Kurdistan, generates as much heat in the Kurdish question as the estimate of the Kurdish population. Kurdish nationalists are tempted to exaggerate it, and governments of the region to understate it. In Turkey only those Kurds who do not speak Turkish are officially counted for census purposes as Kurds, yielding a very low figure.'. In [http://countrystudies.us/turkey/1.htm Turkey: A Country Study], a 1995 on-line publication of the U.S. Library of Congress, there is [http://countrystudies.us/turkey/28.htm a whole chapter about Kurds in Turkey] where it is stated that 'Turkey's censuses do not list Kurds as a separate ethnic group. Consequently, there are no reliable data on their total numbers. In 1995 estimates of the number of Kurds in Turkey is about 8.5 million.' out of 61.2 million, which means 13%. Kurdish national identity is far from being limited to the Kurmanji language community, as many Kurds whose parents migrated towards Istanbul or other large non-Kurdish cities mostly speak Turkish, which is one of the languages used by the Kurdish nationalist publications. According to some sources, Kurmanji Kurds are related with Kuman Turks.

=== Pontians ===
{{Main|Pontians}}
There are still up to 2,000, mainly elderly, people speaking this ancient dialect in Turkey today.{{Citation needed|date=May 2011}}

=== Arabs ===
{{Main|Arabs in Turkey}}

=== Armenians ===
{{Main|Armenians in Turkey}}
Armenians in Turkey have an estimated population of 40,000 (1995) to 70,000.<ref>{{cite web | last=Turay | first=Anna | title=Tarihte Ermeniler | publisher=[http://www.bolsohays.com Bolsohays: Istanbul Armenians] | url=http://www.bolsohays.com/webac.asp?referans=1 | accessdate=2007-01-04}}</ref><ref>{{cite news|url=http://www.taraf.com.tr/Yazar.asp?id=12
|accessdate=2008-09-02
|title=Türk Ermenisiz, Ermeni Türksüz olmaz!
|work=[[Taraf]]
|first=Ayşe
|last=Hür
|date=2008-08-31
|quote=Sonunda nüfuslarını 70 bine indirmeyi başardık.
|language=Turkish}}</ref> Most are concentrated around [[Istanbul]]. The [[Armenians]] support their own newspapers and schools. The majority belong to the [[Armenian Apostolic]] faith, with smaller numbers of [[Armenian Catholic Church|Armenian Catholics]] and [[Armenian Evangelical Church|Armenian Evangelicals]].

=== Assyrians/Syriacs ===
{{Main|Syriacs in Turkey}}
An estimated 25,000 [[Assyrian/Syriac people|Assyrians/Syriacs]] live in Turkey, with about 17,000 in [[Istanbul]] and the other 8,000 scattered in [[Southeastern Anatolia Region|southeast Turkey]]. They belong to the [[Syriac Orthodox Church]], [[Syriac Catholic Church]], and [[Chaldean Catholic Church]].
The [[Mhallami]], who usually are described as Arabs, have [[Assyrian/Syriac people|Assyrian/Syriac]] ancestry. They live in the area between [[Mardin]] and [[Midyat]], called in [[Syriac]] "I Mhalmayto" (ܗܝ ܡܚܠܡܝܬܐ).

=== Azerbaijanis ===
{{Main|Azerbaijanis in Turkey}}
According to some sources, there are about 800,000 [[Azerbaijanis]], however this figure may differ substantially from the real one.Up to 300,000 of Azeris who reside in Turkey are citizens of [[Azerbaijan]].They currently are the largest ethnic group in the city of [[Iğdır]] and second largest ethnic group in [[Kars]].

=== Circassians ===
{{See also|Peoples of the Caucasus in Turkey}}
Towards the end of the [[Russian-Circassian War]] (1763–1864) many [[Circassians]] fled their homelands in the [[Caucasus]] and settled in the Ottoman Empire.

=== Georgians ===
{{Main|Chveneburi}}

=== Lazs ===
{{Main|Laz people}}
Most Lazs today live in Turkey, but the Laz minority group has no official status in Turkey. Their number today is estimated to be around 150,000.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://i-cias.com/e.o/turkey_4.htm |title=Turkey: Religions & Peoples |last=Kjeilen |first=Tore |work=LookLex Encyclopedia}}</ref> and 250.000<ref>[http://www.minorityrights.org/?lid=4398 Minority Rights Group International : Turkey : Laz]</ref><ref>http://web.archive.org/web/20091027141247/http://www.geocities.com/Athens/9479/laz.html</ref> Most of the Laz are [[Sunni Muslims]]. Most speak only Turkish as a native language while only a minority are bilingual in Turkish and their native [[Laz language]], which belongs to the [[South Caucasian languages|South Caucasian group]]. The number of the Laz speakers is decreasing, and is now limited chiefly to the [[Rize]] and [[Artvin]] areas. The historical term [[Lazistan]] — formerly referring to a narrow tract of land along the [[Black Sea]] inhabited by the Laz as well as by several other ethnic groups — has been banned from official use and replaced with ''Doğu Karadeniz'' (which also includes [[Trabzon]]). But Lazs are minority at the Black Sea. Most of people at Black Sea region are Çepni Turks (Oghuz). During the [[Russo-Turkish War of 1877–1878]], the [[Muslim]] population of Russia near the war zones was subjected to ethnic cleansing; many Lazs living in [[Georgia (country)|Georgia]] fled to the Ottoman Empire, settling along the southern Black Sea coast to the east of [[Samsun]].

=== Roma people ===
{{Main|Roma in Turkey}}
[[File:Gipsy camp.png|thumb|right|A Gipsy camp near Istanbul (1901)]]
The Roma in Turkey descend from the times of the [[Byzantine Empire]]. There are officially about 500,000 Roma in Turkey,<ref>http://www.unhcr.org/refworld/topic,4565c2253b,4677ea9b2,46ef87ab32,0.html</ref><ref>http://www.eurasianet.org/departments/civilsociety/articles/eav072205.shtml</ref><ref>http://www.ihf-hr.org/viewbinary/viewdocument.php?doc_id=7081</ref> though the unofficial estimations of experts don't agree with this number. [[Sulukule]], located in Western Istanbul, is the oldest Roma settlement in Europe.

=== Converts from Christianity and Judaism ===
{{Unreferenced section|date=May 2011}}
[[Islam]] spread slowly over many generations either through voluntary or forced [[Religious conversion|conversions]]; many poor families chose to become Muslims in order to escape a [[jizya|special tax]] levied on conquered [[Millet (Ottoman Empire)|millet]] peoples or for reasons of upward mobility. Another common motivation was to escape the [[Devshirmeh|devşirme]] system for recruiting [[Janissary|Janissaries]] to the Ottoman forces, and the similar institution of using [[dhimmi]] children to serve as [[odalisque]]s or [[köçek]]s in the [[Ottoman Turks|Ottoman]] [[Harem (household)|harem]]s or as [[tellak]]s in the [[hammam]]s. Conversion to Islam was usually accompanied by the adoption of the Ottoman-Turkish [[Ottoman Turkish language|language]] and [[Ottoman Turks|identity]] and eventual acceptance into the mainstream population, because conversion was generally irreversible and resulted in [[Shunning|ostracism]] from the original [[ethnic group]].

While smaller converted groups generally assimilated to the culturally dominant Turkish ethnicity, some have maintained a distinct ethnicity for centuries. The [[Hamshenis]] are an ethnic group of (originally) Armenians who converted to Islam in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries but still keep some pre-Islamic traditions and retain the use of two distinct Armenian dialects. Their Laz neighbours name them "Sumekhi" the Turkish term for Armenians. There are also some Pontic [[Greek Muslims]].

Among the Black Sea Turkish intellectuals, there has been in the last few years a revival of interest for the forgotten ethnic and religious identities of their ancestors. The research by [[Özhan Öztürk]], but also the books of [[Ömer Asan]] and Selma Koçiva, are good illustrations at this trend.

There have also been, through the 19th and 20th centuries and still nowadays, rumors of the existence, mostly in rural and small town areas, of sizable populations of [[Crypto-Christians]] and [[Crypto-Jews]], notably among the [[Donmeh|Dönme]], descendants of [[Sabbatai Zevi]]'s followers who had to convert ''en masse'' following Zevi's example.

==Largest cities==
{{Largest cities in Turkey}}

== Languages spoken ==
[[Turkish language|Turkish]] (official), [[Kurdish language|Kurdish]], [[Circassian language|Circassian]], [[Zazaki language|Zazaki]], [[Arabic language|Arabic]], [[Azeri language|Azeri]], [[Armenian language|Armenian]], [[Syriac language|Syriac]], [[Bulgarian language|Bulgarian]], [[Albanian language|Albanian]], [[Laz language|Laz]], [[Georgian language|Georgian]], [[Greek language|Greek]], and [[Bosnian language|Bosnian]].

{| class = class="wikitable sortable"
!Language
!Mother tongue
!Only language spoken
!Second best language spoken
|----
| [[Abaza language|Abaza]]
| 4,563
| 280
| 7,556
|----
| [[Albanian language|Albanian]]
| 12,832
| 1,075
| 39,613
|----
| [[Arabic language|Arabic]]
| 365,340
| 189,134
| 167,924
|----
| [[Armenian language|Armenian]]
| 33,094
| 1,022
| 22,260
|----
| [[Bosnian language|Bosnian]]
| 17,627
| 2,345
| 34,892
|----
| [[Bulgarian language|Bulgarian]]
| 4,088
| 350
| 46,742
|----
| [[Pomaks|Bulgarian - Pomak]]
| 23,138
| 2,776
| 34,234
|----
| [[Chechen language|Chechen]]
| 7,563
| 2,500
| 5,063
|----
| [[Circassian language|Circassian]]
| 58,339
| 6,409
| 48,621
|----
| [[Croatian language|Croatian]]
| 45
| 1
| 1,585
|----
| [[Czech language|Czech]]
| 168
| 25
| 76
|----
| [[Dutch language|Dutch]] (or ''Flemish'')
| 366
| 23
| 219
|----
| [[English language|English]]
| 27,841
| 21,766
| 139,867
|----
| [[French language|French]]
| 3,302
| 398
| 96,879
|----
| [[Georgian language|Georgian]]
| 34,330
| 4,042
| 44,934
|----
| [[German language|German]]
| 4,901
| 790
| 35,704
|----
| [[Greek language|Greek]]
| 48,096
| 3,203
| 78,941
|----
| [[Italian language|Italian]]
| 2,926
| 267
| 3,861
|----
| [[Kurdish language|Kurdish]] ([[Kurmanji]])
| 2,219,502
| 1,323,690
| 429,168
|----
| [[Ladino language|Judæo-Spanish]]
| 9,981
| 283
| 3,510
|----
| [[Laz language|Laz]]
| 26,007
| 3,943
| 55,158
|----
| [[Persian language|Persian]]
| 948
| 72
| 2,103
|----
| [[Polish language|Polish]]
| 110
| 20
| 377
|----
| [[Portuguese language|Portuguese]]
| 52
| 5
| 3,233
|----
| [[Romanian language|Romanian]]
| 406
| 53
| 6,909
|----
| [[Russian language|Russian]]
| 1,088
| 284
| 4,530
|----
| [[Serbian language|Serbian]]
| 6,599
| 776
| 58,802
|----
| [[Spanish language|Spanish]]
| 2,791
| 138
| 4,297
|----
| [[Turkish language|Turkish]]
| 28,289,680
| 26,925,649
| 1,387,139
|----
| [[Zazaki language|Zaza]]
| 150,644
| 92,288
| 20,413
|----
|}
Languages spoken in Turkey, 1984 data<ref>[[Heinz Kloss]] & Grant McConnel, Linguistic composition of the nations of the world, vol,5, Europe and USSR, Québec, Presses de l'Université Laval, 1984, ISBN 2-7637-7044-4
</ref>

== Minorities ==
Modern Turkey was founded by [[Mustafa Kemal]] as [[Secularism|secular]] (''Laiklik'', Turkish adaptation of French ''[[Laïcité]]''), i.e. without a [[state religion]], or separate ethnic divisions/ identities.

The concept of "minorities" has only been accepted by the Republic of Turkey as defined by the [[Treaty of Lausanne]] of 1924 and thence strictly limited to Greeks, Jews and Armenians, only on religious matters, excluding from the scope of the concept the ethnic identities of these minorities as of others such as the Kurds who make up 15% of the country; others include Assyrians/Syriacs of various Christian denominations, Alevis and all the others.

There are many reports from sources such as ([[Human Rights Watch]], [[European Parliament]], [[European Commission]], national parliaments in EU member states, [[Amnesty International]] etc.) on persistent yet declining discrimination.

Certain current trends are:
* Turkish [[Imam (Sunni Islam)|imams]] get salaries from the state (like Greek Orthodox clerics in Greece), whereas Turkish Alevi as well as non-Orthodox and non-Armenian clerics are not paid
* Imams can be trained freely at the numerous religious schools and theology departments of universities throughout the country; minority religions can not re-open schools for training of their local clerics due to legislation and international treaties dating back to the end of [[Turkish War of Independence]]. The closing of the [[Halki seminary|Theological School of Halki]] is a sore bone of contention between Turkey and the [[Eastern Orthodox Church|Eastern Orthodox]] world;
* The Turkish state sends out paid imams, working under authority from the Presidency of Religious Affairs ([[Diyanet İşleri Başkanlığı]]) to various European or Asian countries with Turkish- or Turkic-speaking populations, with as local heads officials from the Turkish consulates;
* Turkey has recently engaged in promulgating a series of legal enactments aiming at removal of the procedural hurdles before the use of several local languages spoken by Turkish citizens such as Kurdish (Kurmanji), Arabic and Zaza as medium of public communication, together with several other smaller ethnic group languages. A few private Kurdish teaching centers have recently been allowed to open. Kurdish language TV broadcasts on 7/24 basis at the public frequency denominated in the government-owned [[TRT 6]], while the private national channels show no interest yet. However there are already several satellite Kurdish TV stations operating from Kurdish Autonomous Region at Northern Iraq and Western Europe, broadcasting in Kurdish, Turkish and Neo-Aramaic languages, [[Kurdistan TV]], [[Kurdsat TV|KurdSAT]], etc.;
* Non-Muslim minority numbers are said to be falling rapidly, mainly as a result of aging, migration (to [[state of Israel|Israel]], [[Greece]], the [[United States]] and [[Western Europe]]).
*There is concern over the future of the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate, which suffers from a lack of trained clergy due to the closure of the Halki school. The state does not recognise the Ecumenical status of the [[Patriarch of Constantinople]].

According to figures released by the Foreign Ministry in December 2008, there are 89,000 Turkish citizens designated as belonging to a minority, two thirds of Armenian descent.<ref>{{cite news|url=http://www.todayszaman.com/tz-web/detaylar.do?load=detay&link=161291 |accessdate=2008-12-15 |title=Foreign Ministry: 89,000 minorities live in Turkey |date=2008-12-15 |work=[[Today's Zaman]] }}</ref>

==CIA World Fact Book demographic statistics==
The following demographic statistics are from the CIA World Factbook,<ref name="ciawfb"/> unless otherwise indicated.

'''Population'''
73,722,988 (December 2010)

'''Age structure'''
''0-14 years:'' 26.6%
 ''15-64 years:'' 67.1%
 ''65 years and over:'' 6.3%

'''Population growth rate'''
1.235% (2011 est.)

'''Birth rate'''
17.93 births/1,000 population (2011 est.)

'''Death rate'''
6.1 deaths/1,000 population (July 2011 est.)

'''Net migration rate'''
0.51 migrant(s)/1,000 population (2011 est.)

'''Sex ratio'''
''at birth:''
1.05 male(s)/female
 ''under 15 years:''
1.05 male(s)/female
 ''15–64 years:''
1.02 male(s)/female
 ''65 years and over:''
0.84 male(s)/female
 ''total population:''
1.02 male(s)/female (2010 est.)

'''Infant mortality rate'''
23.94 deaths/1,000 live births

'''Life expectancy at birth'''
''total population:''
72.5 years
 ''male:''
70.61 years
 ''female:''
74.49 years (2011 est.)

'''Total fertility rate'''
2.15 children born/woman (2011 est.)

'''Nationality'''
''noun:''
Turk(s)
 ''adjective:''
Turkish

'''Ethnic groups'''
Turkish 85-90 %, Kurdish 5-8 %, others 2-3 % (2008 est.)

'''Religions'''
Muslim 99.8% (mostly Sunni), other 0.2% (mostly Christians and Jews)

'''Languages'''
Turkish (official), Kurdish, Arabic, other minority languages

'''Literacy'''
''definition:''
age 15 and over can read and write
total population: 87.4%
 male: 95.3%
 female: 79.6% (2004 est.)

== External links ==
{{Portal|Turkey}}
* [http://www.minorityrights.org/645/reports/reports.html Reports by Minority Rights Group on Turkey's minorities]

== References ==

{{reflist|colwidth=30em}}

{{Turkey topics}}
{{Asia topic|Demographics of}}
{{Demographics of Europe}}
{{Asia topic|Ethnic groups in}}
{{Europe topic|Ethnic groups in}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Demographics Of Turkey}}
{{Commons category|Demographics of Turkey}}

[[Category:Demographics of Turkey| ]]

[[bg:Население на Турция]]
[[de:Demografie der Türkei]]
[[es:Demografía de Turquía]]
[[fr:Démographie de la Turquie]]
[[he:דמוגרפיה של טורקיה]]
[[lt:Turkijos demografija]]
[[pt:Demografia da Turquia]]
[[ru:Население Турции]]
[[sq:Demografia e Turqisë]]
[[sr:Демографија Турске]]

LaserDisc

2006-07-13T23:16:34Z

69.156.31.28: /* Success of the Format */

[[Image:LaserDisc.svg|300px|thumb|Pioneer's LaserDisc Logo]]
[[Image:LD-mark.svg|thumb|Laserdisc certification mark]]

The '''Laser Disc''' ('''LD''') was the first commercial [[optical disc]] storage medium, and was used primarily for the presentation of movies.

During its development, the format was referred to as the '''Reflective Optical Videodisc System''' before [[Music Corporation of America|MCA]], who owned the patent on the technology, re-named the format '''[[DiscoVision|Disco-Vision]]''' in [[1969]]. By the time the format was brought to market in [[1978]], the hyphen had been removed from the format name, and '''DiscoVision''' became the official format name. Sales of DiscoVision players & discs began on [[December 15]], [[1978]] starting in [[Atlanta, Georgia]]. MCA owned the rights to the largest catalog of films in the world during this time, and they directly manufactured and distributed the discs of their movies under the "MCA DiscoVision" label. [[Pioneer (company)|Pioneer Electronics]], who entered the market almost at exactly the time DiscoVision titles were going on sale in 1978, began manufacturing players and printing discs under the name '''laser videodisc'''. By [[1981]], ''Laserdisc'' (first in [[CamelCase]] as '''LaserDisc''', later without the inter caps) had become the common name for the format, and the Discovision label disappeared, simply becoming MCA or (later) MCA-Universal Laserdisc.

MCA also manufactured discs for other companies, including Paramount, Disney and Warner Brothers. Some of them added their own names onto the disc-jacket in order to signify the movie was not owned by MCA. When MCA folded into Universal several years later, Universal began re-issuing many of the early DiscoVision titles as Universal discs. The DiscoVision versions had largely been available only in [[pan and scan]] and had often utilized poor transfers. The format has also been known as '''LV''' (for '''LaserVision''', actually a player brand by [[Philips]]). The players are also sometimes referred to as '''VDPs''' ('''Video Disc Players''').

==History==
Laser Disc technology, using a transparent disc, was invented by [[David Paul Gregg]] in [[1958]] (and patented in [[1961]] and [[1969]]). By [[1969]] [[Philips]] had developed a videodisc in reflective mode, which has great advantages over the transparent mode. [[Music Corporation of America|MCA]] and [[Philips]] decided to join their efforts. They first publicly demonstrated the videodisc in [[1972]]. It was first available on the market, in [[Atlanta]], on [[December 15]], [[1978]], two years after the [[VHS]] [[VCR]] and five years before the [[compact disc|CD]], which is based on laserdisc technology. Philips produced the players and MCA the discs. The Philips/MCA cooperation was not successful, and discontinued after a few years.

There are more than 1 million players in home use in the [[United States|U.S.]] (compared to 85 million VCRs), and more than 4 million in [[Japan]] (or 10% of households). LD has been completely replaced by [[DVD]] in the North American retail marketplace, as neither players nor software are now produced there. Laserdisc has retained some popularity among American collectors and to a greater degree, in Japan, where the format was better supported and more prevalent during its life. In Europe, on the other hand, LD has always remained an extremely obscure format.

The first Laser Disc title marketed in North America was the MCA DiscoVision release of ''[[Jaws]]'' in 1978. The last two titles released in North America were Paramount's ''[[Sleepy Hollow]]'' and ''[[Bringing Out the Dead]]'' in 2000. A dozen or so more titles continued to be released in Japan until the end of 2001. The last Japanese-released LD-format movie title was ''[[Tokyo Raiders]]''.

A early single-sided prototype DiscoVision laserdisc made an apperarance in the 1977 movie [[Airport '77]], during a scene in which a flight stewardess inserts it into what looks like a Magnavox VH-8005 "Magnavision" player for an in-flight movie.

==Technical Information==
===Software===
Resembling a large audio Compact Disc, the standard movie laserdisc disc was 12 inches (30 cm) in diameter and made up of two single-sided stamped aluminium discs bonded with glue and sandwiched between two sheets of plastic. Laserdisc is an analog format, unlike the modern CD or DVD which are digital formats. Both formats are pressed with pits and lands making up the structure of the disc. On a digital audio CD (or DVD) the pits and lands will signify [[binary numeral system|binary]] codes; with a Laserdisc, the pits and lands are created using [[frequency modulation]] of an analog signal, with the frequency carrier encoded using [[pulse-width modulation]]. Additionally, all laserdiscs could be encoded with ''chapters'' akin to ''tracks'' and display several modes of time, such as "elapsed", "left in chapter", and "left in side".[[Image:LDDVDComparison.jpg|thumb|left|250px|Laserdisc (left) compared to a DVD.]]

===Audio===
[[Sound|Audio]] could be stored in either analog or digital format and in a variety of [[surround sound]] formats; [[NTSC]] discs could carry two analog audio tracks, plus two [[audio data compression|uncompressed]] [[PCM]] [[digital audio]] tracks, which were CD quality (2 channels, 16 bit, 44.1KHz [[sample rate]] for [[PAL]] and 44056Hz for [[NTSC]], and a 96dB [[signal-to-noise ratio]]). [[PAL]] discs could carry one pair of audio tracks, either analog or digital; in the UK the term ''LaserVision'' is used to refer to discs with analog sound, while ''LaserDisc'' is used for those with digital audio. [[Dolby Digital]] (also called AC-3) and [[Digital Theater Systems|DTS]], which are now common on DVD titles, first became available on Laserdisc, and ''[[Star Wars: Episode I]]'' ([[1999]]) which was released on Laser Disc in Japan, is among the first home video releases ever to include 6.1 channel Dolby Digital EX Surround. Unlike DVDs, which carry Dolby Digital audio in digital form, Laserdiscs store Dolby Digital in a [[frequency modulated]] form within a track normally used for analog audio. Extracting Dolby Digital from a Laserdisc required a player equipped with a special "AC-3 RF" output and an external [[demodulator]] in addition to an AC-3 [[decoder]]. The demodulator was necessary to convert the 2.88 [[Megahertz|MHz]] modulated AC-3 information on the disc into a 384 [[kbit/s]] signal that the decoder could handle. DTS audio, when available on a disc, replaced the digital audio tracks; hearing DTS sound required only an [[Toslink|optical digital audio]] connection to a DTS decoder.

At least where the digital audio tracks were concerned, the sound quality was unsurpassed at the time, but the quality of the analog soundtracks varied greatly depending on the disc and, sometimes, the player. Many early and lower-end LD players had poor analog audio sections, and many early discs had poor analog audio tracks, making Digital soundtracks in any form most desirable to serious enthusiasts once they became available. Early Discovision and Laserdisc titles lacked the digital audio option, but many of those movies received digital sound in later re-issues by Universal, and the quality of analog audio tracks generally got better as time went on. Many discs that had originally carried old analog stereo tracks received new [[Dolby Stereo]] and [[Dolby Surround]] tracks instead, often in addition to digital tracks, helping boost sound quality. Later discs also applied [[CX (audio)|CX Noise Reduction]], which improved the signal-noise ratio of analog audio. In addition many later PAL discs have no analog audio track at all, instead offering the choice of the PCM digital audio track or Dolby Digital.

Both AC-3 and DTS surround audio were clumsily implemented on laserdiscs, leading to some interesting player- and disc-dependent issues. A disc that included AC-3 audio forfeited the right analog channel to the modulated AC-3 stream. If the player did not have an AC-3 decoder available, the next most attractive option would be the stereo digital tracks. If either the player did not support digital tracks or the disc did not include digital tracks, the only remaining option was to fallback to a monophonic presentation on the analog left track. However, a player that is not aware of AC-3 streams (independent of its ability to decode them) will play the analog audio tracks verbatim, resulting in garbage output in the right channel. With a DTS disc, the PCM digital tracks are not available, so if a DTS decoder was also not available, the only option was to fallback to the stereo analog tracks.

Usually, only one surround sound option existed on a given laserdisc (Dolby Surround, Dolby Digital, or DTS), so if surround sound is desired, the disc must be carefully matched to the player's capabilities by the purchaser. It should also be noted that both the analog and digital tracks are capable of carrying [[Dolby Surround]]-encoded information (whether a particular disc does depends on the manufacturer); and that given a [[Dolby Surround]]-encoded source, laserdisc players and surround-sound processors that implement [[Dolby Pro Logic]] are capable of superior surround decoding than those who only implement Dolby Surround decoding.

===Format===
Laser Discs were recorded in one of 3 formats.

*'''CAV''' ([[Constant Angular Velocity]]) or ''Standard Play'' discs supported the several unique features such as freeze frame, variable slow motion and reverse. CAV discs were spun at a constant rotational speed during playback, with one video [[frame (film)|frame]] read per revolution and in this mode, 54,000 individual frames or 30 minutes of audio/video could be stored on a single side of a CAV disc. Another unique attribute to CAV was to reduce the visibility of [[cross talk]] from adjacent tracks, since on CAV discs any crosstalk at a specific point in a frame is simply from the same point in the next or previous frame. CAV was used less frequently than CLV, reserved for special editions of feature films to highlight bonus material and special effects.

*'''CLV''' ([[Constant Linear Velocity]]) or ''Extended Play'' discs do not have the "trick play" features of CAV, offering only simple playback on all but the high-end laserdisc players incorporating a [[digital frame store]]. These high-end Laser Disc players could add features not normally available to CLV discs such as variable forward and reverse, and a VCR-like "pause". CLV encoded discs could store 60 minutes of audio/video. The vast majority of titles were only available in CLV.

*'''CAA''' ([[Constant Linear Velocity|Constant Angular Acceleration]]). In the early 1980s, due to problems with crosstalk distortion on CLV extended play LaserDiscs, Pioneer Video introduced CAA formatting for extended play discs. Constant Angular Acceleration is very similar to Constant Linear Velocity save for the fact that CAA varies the angular rotation of the disc in controlled steps instead of gradually slowing down as a CLV disc is read. With exception to 3M/Imation, all LaserDisc manufacturers adopted the CAA encoding scheme, even though many manufacturers still referred CAA extended play discs ubiquitously as CLV on the disc packaging.

===Hardware===
Many Laser Disc players manufactured from the late [[1980s]] through the time of the format's death had both composite (red, white and yellow [[RCA connector|RCA]] type connectors) and [[S-Video]] outputs on the rear panel. When using the S-Video connection, the player would utilize its own internal [[comb filter]], designed to help reduce picture noise by separating the luminance (brightness) and color parts of the signal, while using the composite outputs forced the player to rely on the comb filter of the display device. Although using the S-Video connection was often considered to yield superior results in the late 80s and early [[1990s]], most of today's mid and high level television sets contain better comb filters than the vast majority of players were equipped with. In these instances, where a player is being used with a more modern display, using the composite output and allowing the display device's internal comb filter to do the work often yields better results.

===Combi-players===
In 1996, the first model DVD/LD combi-player and first Pioneer DVD player for that matter was the Pioneer DVL-9 released in Japan. The Pioneer Elite DVL-90 an updated version, followed by a similar, though supposedly lower-end model, the DVL-700, and were released in 1997. Successors to this model include the Pioneer DVL-909, Pioneer DVL-919, and the Pioneer Elite DVL-91. Although the DVD/LD combi players did offer competent LD performance, they pale in comparison to high end LD players such as the Pioneer Elite CLD-99 and the Pioneer Hi-Vision/MUSE HLD-X9.

The Pioneer DVL-909 lacks support for DTS output. However, a modification to the player can allow this player to support DTS streams on DTS discs, essentially turning the DVL-909 into a Pioneer Elite DVL-91.

The last model DVD/LD player, the DVL-919, was sold for a short while in the U.S. and was subsequently discontinued in 1999 when the format had lost the vast majority of its waning support. In any case, even the least expensive of newer DVD players have generally surpassed the quality and capability of the 919's DVD section and its LD section was never considered better than mediocre by comparison to many other units, even when new. The second of the units offered in Japan, a Laserdisc-only player, model designation CLD-R5, is sold at a lower cost. Although rumor has had it that select Pioneer dealers still have access to leftover, North American specification DVL-919s, and Pioneer has yet to remove the product from their North American website, Pioneer representatives say that the product is officially discontinued and that warranty coverage for 919s will be based on the date of manufacturing rather than on the date of sale.

An interesting note is that [[David Letterman]] apparently owned a DVL-919. He spent part of a 1999 show complaining that his DVD of ''Lawrence of Arabia'' had a heavy blue tint to it. The next night, after a call from a Pioneer Representative, he explained that he owned a DVD/LD combo player, and Pioneer assured him that the problem was due to the "wrong filter" reading the disc (although this is not possible in explaining the problem). As the only combo player available in the U.S. at the time was the 919, one assumes this was the player he owned. Coincidentally, Pioneer offered Dave a new DVD-only player as well.

===High End Japanese Players===
Certain Japanese players, which are considered to be of higher quality or of greater capacity for quality playback than the North American units, are occasionally imported by enthusiasts. These include the LD-S9, HLD-X9 and HLD-X0. All three are manufactured by Pioneer and all three contain technology that was never officially available in North American Laserdisc players. The LD-S9 and HLD-X9 share a highly advanced [[comb filter]], allowing them to offer a considerable advantage in picture quality over most other LD players when the S-Video connection is used. The comb filter present in these players is unique and is purportedly the finest comb filter ever used in consumer A/V gear, it is still currently in use in Mitsubishi's top-spec CRT rear projection television sets (the Diamond and now defunct Platinum series sets) and Pioneer's Elite line of rear projection televisions. In addition to the advanced comb filter, the HLD-X9 contains a red laser pickup which significantly reduces crosstalk and picture-noise levels compared to players with the traditional infrared laser; it can also read through all but the worst cases of laser rot and surface wear. The HLD-X9 is, lastly, also a [[Multiple sub-nyquist sampling Encoding|MUSE]] player, capable when properly equipped of playing back high definition laserdiscs, called Hi-Vision or MUSE discs in Japan. The HLD-X0 is Pioneer's original MUSE player, and is the player of choice for many enthusiasts despite the fact that it lacks the comb filter shared by the S9 and X9. It was entirely hand built from hand picked electronics and weighed a massive 36 kilograms. Many argue that the newer X9 was a more capable MUSE player but that the X0 had superior performance with standard NTSC discs. Nonetheless, the X9 remains the more popular of the two models, as it includes the newer comb filter and is a dual-side player, meaning that double sided discs don't need to be manually flipped over in order for both sides to be played.

=== Significant Players ===
*[[Pioneer LD-S1]]
*[[Pioneer CLD-1010]]
*[[Pioneer LD-S2]]
*[[Pioneer CLD-D703|Pioneer CLD-D703/CLD-D704/CLD-79]]
*[[Pioneer CLD-97]]
*[[Pioneer CLD-99]]
*[[Pioneer HLD-X0]]
*[[Pioneer HLD-X9]]
*[[Pioneer DVL|DVL-700/DVL-909/DVL-90/DVL-91/DVL-919]]

==Laser Disc vs VHS==
LD had a number of advantages over [[VHS]]. It featured a far sharper picture with a horizontal [[resolution]] of 400 lines for NTSC and 440 lines for PAL discs, while the VHS only featured 250 lines. It could handle analog and digital audio where VHS was analog only, and the NTSC discs could store multiple audio tracks. This allowed for extras like director's commentary tracks and other features to be added on to a film, creating "Special Edition" releases that would not have been possible with the VHS. Disc access was random and chapter-based, like the DVD format, meaning that one could jump to any point on a given disc very quickly (depending on the player and the disc, within a few seconds at the most). By comparison, VHS would require tedious rewinding and/or fast-forwarding to get to specific points. Laser Discs were cheaper and very much more convenient to use than videocassettes to manufacture, because they lack the moving parts and plastic outer shell that are necessary for VHS tapes to work. (A standard VHS cassette has at least 14 parts including the actual tape. A Laser Disc has one part, with 5 to 6 layers.)

Moreover, because the discs are read optically instead of magnetically, no physical contact needs to be made between the player and the disc, except for the player's clamp that holds the disc at its center as it is spun and read and/or damage or scratch inficted underneath the disc. As a result, playback does not wear the information-bearing part of the discs, and properly manufactured LDs will theoretically last beyond one's lifetime. By contrast, a VHS tape holds all of its picture and sound information on the tape in a magnetic coating which rubs directly against the player heads, causing progressive wear with each use. Also, the tape is thin and delicate, and it is easy for a player mechanism (especially on a cheap model) to mishandle the tape and damage it by creasing it, frilling (stretching) its edges, or even breaking it.

===Special Editions===
The format's support for multiple audio tracks allowed for vast supplemental materials to be included on-disc and made it the first viable format for "Special Edition" releases; the [[1984]] [[Criterion Collection]] edition of ''[[Citizen Kane]]'' is generally credited as being the first "Special Edition" release to home video, and for setting the standard by which future SE discs were measured. In addition, the format's instant seeking capability made it possible for a new breed of laserdisc-based video [[arcade game]]s, beginning with ''[[Dragon's Lair]]'', to be born.

===Disadvantages of the Format===

Unfortunately, the format was not without its disadvantages. The discs were 30cm (12 inches) across, heavy, cumbersome, easier to damage on handling than a VHS cassette, and did not have recording capabilities.

And despite their large physical size, the space-consuming analog video signal of a Laser Disc limted playback duration to 30 or 60 minutes per side. After one side was finished playing, a disc would have to be flipped over in order to continue watching the film, and many films required 2 discs or more. Many players, especially units built after the mid-1980s, could "flip" discs automatically by rotating the optical pickup to the other side of the disc, but this was accompanied by a pause in the movie during the side change. If the movie was longer than what could be stored on 2 sides of a single disc, manually swapping to a second disc would be necessary at some point during the film.

===Laser Rot===
To make matters worse, many early LDs were not manufactured properly; sometimes a substandard adhesive was used to sandwich together the 2 sides of the disc. The adhesive contained impurities that were able to penetrate the lacquer seal layer and chemically attack the reflective substrate, causing it to [[oxidation|oxidize]] and lose its reflective characteristics. This was a problem that was coined "[[laser rot]]" (or, "Laser Rot", after the original official [[CamelCase]] "Laser Disc" name of the underlying product) among LD enthusiasts. Early CDs suffered [[CD rot|similar problems]], including a notorious batch of defective discs manufactured by Philips-DuPont Optical in Europe during the early [[1990s]].

Currently, the Laser Disc movie that has the most reported laser rot is the film ''[[Eraser (movie)|Eraser]]'' ([[1996]]), as noted by the contributors of [http://www.lddb.com LaserDisc Database]. The discs for this title were replicated by Sony Digital Audio Disc Corporation, USA, in [[Terre Haute, Indiana]].

==Laser Disc vs DVD==
The differences between LD technology and [[DVD]] have led some videophiles to prefer LD. Laser Discs use only analog video and almost always carry some form of analog audio. Some claim that analog media is capable of higher quality than digital A/V carriers such as CD and DVD, and early DVD demo discs often had compression or encoding problems, giving LD proponents fuel for the fire. However, "LD-perfection" is rarely achieved in practice. Only the absolute best LDs, few and far between, exhibit such superior quality in comparison to the newer DVDs, and even then, expensive equipment is required to realize the benefits.

An advantage to the Laser Disc format over [[DVD]] is that video is not digitally encoded and compressed, and therefore does not experience problems such as [[Compression artifact|artifacting]] (most visible as blockiness during high motion sequences) or [[color banding]] (subtle visible lines in gradient areas, such as skies) that can be caused by the [[MPEG-2]] encoding process as video is prepared for DVD. Fortunately, however, the meticulous frame-by-frame tuning of the encoding process coupled with the variable bit-rate technology generally employed on big-budget DVD releases effectively eliminates this, and an optional feature of the [[MPEG-2]] compression standard allows much higher color resolution to eliminate the visible effect of [[color banding]] on some high-end home theatre equipment. Some videophiles will continue to argue that Laserdisc maintains a "smoother" more "film-like" image while DVD still looks slightly more artificial.

A disadvantage with the analog nature of Laser Discs is that most players exhibit a slight but perceivable 30 [[Hertz|Hz]] video flicker. Slight dust and scratches could cause various problems that could affect video quality and possibly also tracking accuracy of the disc by the player. Wearout and/or calibration drift on the hardware could also play a role in degrading video quality, audio quality, and tracking accuracy. The [[DVD]] format, however, does not introduce any flicker, and the format's digital nature and sophisticated [[error correction]] scheme can often produce spotless video/audio from a DVD, even with dust and scratches on the surface to a certain extent.

Laser Disc players sometimes suffered a problem known as "crosstalk" on extended play discs, usually with equipment requiring service of the laser optical pickup assembly when this occurs. However, the problem with crosstalk may also occur with poorly manufactured CLV Laserdiscs or with discs that are excessively warped. The issue came up when the optical pickup inside the player accidentally picked up the encoded video information from a track adjacent to where it was reading on the disc. The added information usually showed up as distortion in the picture, usually looking reminiscent of and referred to as "barber poles". Some players were better at compensating for and/or avoiding crosstalk entirely than others, provided that the cause of crosstalk was the disc and not the player. However, there is no crosstalk distortion on CAV standard play Laser Discs as the rotational speed never varies. But, if the player calibration is out of order or if the CAV disc is faulty, other problems affecting tracking accuracy could occur, such as "laser lock", a problem where the player reads the same track and, thus, the same two fields for one frame over and over again, causing the picture to freeze as if in pause.

DVD image resolution is also much greater than Laser Disc. Most DVD players allow an [[anamorphic]] transfer of a [[16:9]] movie to be downconverted into a letterbox or pan & scan for TVs that don't support anamorphic display, while very few LD players supported this feature, necessitating the issue of separate editions.

Another major advantage to DVD over Laser Disc was the fact that LD playback quality was highly dependent on player quality (as with any analog format). On most television sets, a given DVD player will produce a picture that is visually indistinguishable from other units; quality differences between players only become easily apparent with higher-end equipment. This was not true of Laser Disc playback quality. Major variances in picture quality could appear between different makes and models of LD player, even when tested on a TV that was not particularly high-end. This fact has had long lasting ramifications, as the pricing for what were considered to be good players has remained comparably high (anywhere from [[United States dollar|$]]200 to well over $1,000), while older and less desirable players can be purchased in working condition for as little as $25.

==Success of the Format==
The format was not well-received outside of [[videophile]] circles in [[North America]], but became more popular in [[Japan]]. Part of the reason was marketing. In North America, the cost of the players and discs were kept far higher than VHS decks and tapes. In Japan, the LD strategy was very similar to the strategy taken by [[DVD]] manufacturers early in its life: prices were kept low to ensure adoption, resulting in minimal price differences between VHS tapes and the higher quality Laserdiscs. LD also quickly became the dominant format of choice amongst Japanese collectors of [[anime]], helping to drive its acceptance. Also in [[Hong Kong]], although the retail price of Laser Discs were relatively high, it became quite popular in the city during the [[1990s]] before the introduction of [[VCD]]s and DVDs. The reason was people rarely bought the discs; they usually rented it and the video renting business grew larger than ever at that time.

Nonetheless, the Laser Disc format did not allow for recording onto the discs, while the competing [[video cassette recorder]] devices could record using tape cassettes. Combined with the inconvenient disc size and high North American prices for both players and media, the format was doomed to obscurity. When they were first introduced, Laser Discs were believed to be what would later be referred to as [[disruptive technology]], a promise they failed to fulfill. [[Compact disc]]s and [[DVD]]s were to be disruptive instead.

Although the Laser Disc format has been completely supplanted by DVD, and new players are no longer sold outside Japan, many LDs are still highly coveted by movie enthusiasts. This is largely because there are many films that are still only available on LD and many other LD releases contain supplemental material not available on subsequent DVD versions of those films. As well, there are various films which are available on DVD as well as LD, but the LD version is preferred.

The most notable example is the [[Criterion Collection]] release of ''[[Blade Runner]]'', as it is the highest-quality release of ''BR'' to contain a [[widescreen]] transfer of the theatrical cut of the film, whereas other releases have been only in [[pan and scan]] or of the so-called Director's Cut of the movie. Other examples include the LD release of the [[anime]] ''[[Five Star Stories]]'', which prior to its long-awaited release on DVD fetched as much as $700 from enthusiasts. Likewise, the LD releases of the original ''[[Star Wars]]'' films are in high demand among fans and videophiles as they offer the highest quality widescreen presentations of the films in their original theatrical cuts, without the digital characters and effects added by George Lucas for the "Special Edition" releases of those films. This LD-only widescreen experience even applies to children's classics, like the ''[[Reader's Digest]]''-produced 1970s musical versions of ''[[Tom Sawyer (1973 film/I)|Tom Sawyer]]'' and ''[[Adventures of Huckleberry Finn|Huckleberry Finn]]'', which are only available in pan-and-scan versions on VHS and have yet to be released on DVD. In fact, due to a contract bind, the pilot episode of ''[[Twin Peaks]]'' as seen in the United States may never be released on DVD, and the LD release is the only way to see it outside of VHS.

LD players are also sometimes found in contemporary North American [[high school]] and college [[physics]] classrooms, in order to play a disc of the ''[[Physics: Cinema Classics]]'' series of mid-[[20th century]] ''[[Encyclopædia Britannica]]'' films reproducing classic experiments in the field which are difficult or impossible to replicate in the laboratories in educational settings.[http://www.phys.unt.edu/~klittler/demo_room/MultiMedia/CINCLSS.html] These films have yet to be released on DVD.

==Laser Disc variations==
===Computer control===
Early in the eighties, Philips produced a laservision player model adapted for a computer interface, dubbed "professional". When hooked to a PC this combination could be used to display images or information for educational or archival purposes, for example thousands of scanned medieval manuscripts. This strange device could be considered a very early equivalent of a CD-ROM. In one case such a "Laser Disc-ROM" was still present, although rarely used, in 2001.

===MUSE LD===

In 1991, several manufacturers announced specifications for what would become known as MUSE Laserdisc. Encoded using [[NHK]]'s [[Multiple sub-nyquist sampling Encoding|MUSE]] "Hi-Vision" analogue TV system, MUSE discs would operate like standard Laserdiscs but would contain high-definition 1125-line (1035 visible lines) video with a 5:3 aspect ratio(1.66:1). The MUSE players were also capable of playing standard NTSC format discs and are said to have superior performance to non-MUSE players. The MUSE-capable players had several noteworthy advantages over standard Laserdisc players, including a red laser with a much narrower wavelength than the lasers found in standard players. The red laser was capable of reading through disc defects such as scratches and even mild [[laser rot|disc rot]] that would cause most other players to stop, stutter or drop-out. Crosstalk was not an issue with MUSE discs, and the narrow wavelength of the laser allowed for the virtual elimination of crosstalk with normal discs. In order to view MUSE encoded discs, it was necessary to have a MUSE decoder in addition to a compatible player and a MUSE-compatible TV set. Equipment prices were high, especially for early HDTVs which generally eclipsed $10,000 USD, and even in Japan the market for MUSE was tiny. Players and discs were never officially sold in North America, although several distributors imported MUSE discs along with other import titles. ''[[Terminator 2: Judgment Day]]'', ''[[Lawrence of Arabia (film)|Lawrence of Arabia]]'', ''[[A League of Their Own]]'', ''[[Bugsy]]'', ''[[Close Encounters of the Third Kind]]'', ''[[Bram Stoker's Dracula]]'' and ''[[Chaplin]]'' were among the theatrical releases available on MUSE LDs. Several documentaries, including one about [[Formula One]] at Japan's [[Suzuka Circuit]] were also released.

===Laser Disc Sizes===

The most common size of Laser Disc was 30cm (12 inches). These approximated the size of [[Gramophone record|LP vinyl records]]. These discs allowed for 30 minutes per side (CAV) or 60 minutes per side (CLV). The vast majority of programming for the Laser Disc format was produced on these discs.

18 cm Laser Discs were also published. These were approx. 8 inches; one inch larger in diameter than a standard 45-RPM [[Gramophone record|record]]. These "[[Extended Play|EP]]"-sized LDs allowed for 20 minutes per side (CLV). They are much rarer than the full-size LDs, especially in North America. These discs were often used for music video compilations (eg. [[Bon Jovi|Bon Jovi's]] "Breakout" or [[Bananarama|Bananarama's]] "Video Singles").

There were also 12cm (5 inch, same as an [[audio CD]]) "[[single (music)|single]]"-style discs produced that were playable on Laser Disc players. These were referred to as [[CD Video]] (CD-V) discs, and [[Video Single Disc]]s (VSD). A CD-V carried up to 5 minutes of analog Laser Disc-type video content (usually a music video), as well as up to 20 minutes of digital [[audio CD]] tracks. CD-Vs are not to be confused with [[Video CD]]s (which are all-digital and can only be played on [[Video CD|VCD]] players, [[DVD]] players, [[CD-i]] players, computers, and later-model laserdisc players (such as the DVL series from Pioneer that can also play DVDs). CD-Vs can only be played back on Laser Disc players with CD-V capability. VSDs were the same as CD-Vs, but without the [[audio CD]] tracks. CD-Vs were somewhat popular for a brief time worldwide, but soon faded from view. VSDs were popular only in Japan and other parts of Asia, and were never really introduced to the rest of the world.

===Picture Discs===
Picture discs have artistic etching on one side of the disc to make the disc more visually attractive than the standard shiny silver surface. This etching might look like a movie character, logo, or other promotional material. Sometimes that side of the LD would be made with colored plastic rather than the clear material used for the data side. Picture disc LDs only had video material on one side as the "picture" side could not contain any data. Picture discs are rare in North America.

===LD+G===
[[Pioneer (company)|Pioneer Electronics]], one of the format's largest supporters/investors, was also deeply involved in the [[karaoke]] business in Japan, and used Laser Discs as the storage medium for music and additional content such as graphics. The format was generally called LD+G. While several other karaoke labels manufactured Laser Discs, there was nothing like the breadth of competition in that industry that exists now, as almost all manufacturers have transitioned to [[CD+G]] discs (en route, possibly, to a new DVD-based format).

===Laser Active===
{{main|Pioneer Laseractive}}
Pioneer also marketed a format similar to LD+G, called [[LD-ROM]]. It was used by Pioneer's LaserActive interactive laserdisc player/video game console introduced in 1993, and contained analog video in combination with digital data. LD-ROM was used for several games that could be played on the LaserActive player/console.

===Squeeze LD===
[[Image:PILF-2193.jpg|thumb|200px|Cover of Pioneer release of Squeeze LD Stargate]]With the release of 16:9 televisions in the mid 1990s, Pioneer and Toshiba decided that it was time take advantage of this aspect ratio. Squeeze LDs are enhanced 16:9 ratio widescreen Laserdiscs. In the video transfer stage the movie is stored in an anamorphic format. The widescreen movie image was stretched to fill the entire video frame with less or none of the video resolution wasted to create letterbox bars. The advantage was a 33% greater vertical resolution compared to regular Laserdisc. This similar procedure was used on DVD. Unlike DVD players very few LD players had the ability to unsqueeze the image. So if the disc were played on a [[4:3]] television the image would be distorted. Since very few people owned 16:9 displays, the marketability of these special discs was very limited.

There were no titles available in the US except for promotional purposes. Upon purchase of a Toshiba 16:9 television you have the option of selecting a number of Warner Brothers 16:9 films. Titles include ''[[Unforgiven]]'', ''[[Grumpy Old Men (film)|Grumpy Old Men]]'', ''[[The Fugitive (1993 film)|The Fugitive]]'', and ''[[Free Willy]]''. The Japanese lineup of titles was different. A series of releases under the banner "SQUEEZE LD" from Pioneer of mostly [[Carolco]] titles included ''[[Basic Instinct]]'', ''[[Stargate (film)|Stargate]]'', ''[[Terminator 2: Judgment Day]]'', ''[[Showgirls]]'', ''[[Cutthroat Island]]'', and ''[[Cliffhanger (film)|Cliffhanger]]''. Oddly enough Terminator 2 was released twice in Squeeze LD, the second release being THX certified and a notable improvement over the first.

===Recordable Formats===
[[Image:CRVDisc.jpg|thumb|250px|A CRV Disc with a [[VHS]] tape for size comparison]]Another type of video media, '''CRVdisc''', or "Component Recordable Video Disc" were available for a short time, mostly to professionals. Developed by [[Sony]], CRVdiscs resemble early [[Personal computer|PC]] [[CD-ROM]] caddies with a disc inside resembling a full sized LD. CRVdiscs were blank media that could be recorded once on each side (much like [[WORM]] media, such as [[CD-R]] discs). CRVdisc was rarely used by the consumer due to the high cost of the equipment and media, and were used largely for backup storage in professional/commercial applications.

Another form of recordable Laser Disc that is completely playback-compatible with the Laser Disc format (unlike CRVdisc, due to its caddy enclosure) is the '''RLV''', or ''Recordable Laser Vision'' disc. It was developed and first marketed by the Optical Disc Corporation (ODC, now [http://www.optical-disc.com ODC Nimbus]) in 1984. RLV discs, like CRVdisc, are also a [[WORM]] technology, and function exactly like a [[CD-R]] disc. RLV discs look almost exactly like standard laserdiscs, and can play in any standard Laser Disc player after they've been recorded. The only difference an RLV disc has over regular factory-pressed Laser Discs is their reflective purple-violet color resulting from the dye embedded in the reflective layer of the disc to make it recordable, as opposed to the silver mirror appearance of regular LDs. The color of RLVs look almost exactly like the purplish color of the dye used for some [[DVD-R]] and [[DVD+R]] discs. RLVs were popular for making short-run quantities of laserdiscs for specialized applications such as interactive [[kiosk]]s and [[flight simulator]]s.

==See also==
*[[Videodisc]]
*[[SelectaVision]]
*[[VHD]]

==External links==
{{wikicommons|Category:Laser Disc}}
*[http://www.totalrewind.org The 'Total Rewind' VCR museum, covering Laser Disc and other vintage formats]
*[http://www.blam1.com/Laser Disc/FAQ/ The Laser Disc FAQ]
*[http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.oz.net/blam/DiscoVision/DiscoVision_History.htm MCA DiscoVision History] via the [[Internet Archive|Wayback Machine]]
*[http://www.mindspring.com/~laserdisc-forever/index.html Laserdisc Forever]
*[http://www.laserdiscarchive.co.uk/laserdisc_archive/laserdisc_archive_page.htm The UK Laser Disc Player Archive - includes North American players]
*[http://lddb.com/ The Laser Disc Database - software, not players]
*[http://www.blamld.com/ BLAM Entertainment Group - includes Star Wars and Star Trek Laser Disc catalogs and lists of Dolby Digital and DTS equipped titles]
*[http://www.laserscans.com/essays/crit2.htm A Tribute To The Criterion Collection]
*[http://www.cedmagic.com/home/cedfaq.html RCA SelectaVision VideoDisc FAQ (Also contains some DiscoVision history)]
*[http://www.moesrealm.com/hometheater/laserdisc-guide.html Laser Disc player buying guide]

{{Homevid}}

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