Minorities in Turkey Minorities in Turkey Minorities in Turkey form a substantial part of the country's population, with at least an estimated 30% of the populace belonging to an ethnic minority. While the Republic of Turkey, following the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne, recognizes Armenians, Greeks and Jews as ethnic minorities, this legal status is not granted to Muslim minorities, such as the Kurds, which constitute the largest minority by a wide margin (13–18%), nor any of the other minorities in the country. The amount of ethnic minorities is suspected to be underestimated by the Turkish government. Ethnic Albanians, Pontic Greeks, Kurds, Arabs, Bosniaks,
Romani people in Turkey Romani people in Turkey The Romani people in Turkey () are an ethnic minority. There are officially about 500,000 Romani in Turkey. By different Turkish and Non-Turkish estimates the number of Romani is up to 4 or 5 million while according to a Turkish source, they are only 0.05% of Turkey's population. The Romani people in Turkey originate from Northern India, presumably from the northwestern Indian states Rajasthan and Punjab. The linguistic evidence has indisputably shown that roots of Romani language lie in India: The language has grammatical characteristics of Indian languages and shares with them a big part of