Music of Turkey to be like the West. However, on the order of the founder of the republic, Atatürk, following his philosophy to take from the West but to remain Turkish in essence, a wide-scale classification and archiving of samples of Turkish folk music from around Anatolia was launched in 1924 and continued until 1953 to collect around 10,000 folk songs. Hungarian composer Béla Bartók visited Ankara and the south-eastern Turkey in 1936 within the context of these works. By 1976, Turkish classical music had undergone a renaissance and a state musical conservatory in Istanbul was founded to give classical musicians the same
Demographics of Turkey way, emphasizing that a "Türk" is anyone who is a citizen of the Republic of Turkey. Currently, article 66 of the Turkish Constitution defines a ""Turk"" as anyone who is "bound to the Turkish state through the bond of citizenship". Ethnic Turks are the majority in Turkey, numbering 55.5 to 60 million. The Kurdish identity remains the strongest of the many minorities in modern Turkey. This is perhaps due to the mountainous terrain of the southeast of the country, where they predominate and represent a majority. They inhabit all major towns and cities across Turkey, however. No accurate up-to-date figures