This statistic shows the ten biggest cities in Turkey in 2021. At the end of 2021, approximately 15.2 million people lived in Istanbul, making it the biggest city in Turkey.

The urban population of Turkey

The total population of Turkey is on its way to reaching 80 million inhabitants, which is about the same amouint as the population of Germany. Slightly more than half of the Turkish population live in urban areas, with Istanbul being home to the largest portion of this urban population with close to 14 million inhabitants. This is about 20 percent of the entire population.

Istanbul is located at the entrance to the Black Sea, between Europe and Asia. It is attractive to both the people of Turkey as a place to live and work and foreign tourists who take advantage of its cultural and historic center. Due to its attractiveness and its location at the crossroads of the east and the west, the city has been investing in transportation infrastructure to support its strategic location and increasing growth.

Ankara, the capital of Turkey, is the second largest city and home to about 4.5 million people. Izmir is the third largest, with almost 3 million inhabitants. A vast amount of the country’s population is located in these three metropolises.

In 2023, the major city of Istanbul had almost **** million inhabitants and was the province with the highest population in Turkey. The Turkish capital, Ankara, was the second-largest province, with *** million people residing there in the same year. Characteristics of the Turkish population The population of Turkey has been following a continuously increasing trend for a long time. As of 2023, there were approximately **** million people living in the country. That year, the male population was slightly higher than the female population, amounting to over **** million. When it comes to the gender distribution among the age groups, the gender gap was the highest among the 90-year-olds and older. In 2023, women constituted ** percent of that age group, whereas the share of men was slightly higher among 0-to-59-year-olds. Structure of the Turkish households The demand for living alone has been increasing in many communities. The case is not much different in Turkey, where the proportion of single households has been on the rise steadily. The share of households with one person peaked in 2023 at nearly ** percent in the country. However, one-family households still registered the highest number of residents as of 2023, with roughly **** million. In comparison, one-person households counted *** million individuals.

Population in largest city in Turkey was reported at 16047350 in 2024, according to the World Bank collection of development indicators, compiled from officially recognized sources. Turkey - Population in largest city - actual values, historical data, forecasts and projections were sourced from the World Bank on August of 2025.

Turkey TR: Population in Largest City data was reported at 14,556,884.000 Person in 2017. This records an increase from the previous number of 14,365,329.000 Person for 2016. Turkey TR: Population in Largest City data is updated yearly, averaging 6,188,484.500 Person from Dec 1960 (Median) to 2017, with 58 observations. The data reached an all-time high of 14,556,884.000 Person in 2017 and a record low of 1,453,353.000 Person in 1960. Turkey TR: Population in Largest City data remains active status in CEIC and is reported by World Bank. The data is categorized under Global Database’s Turkey – Table TR.World Bank: Population and Urbanization Statistics. Population in largest city is the urban population living in the country's largest metropolitan area.; ; United Nations, World Urbanization Prospects.; ;

Population in the largest city (% of urban population) in Turkey was reported at 24.09 % in 2024, according to the World Bank collection of development indicators, compiled from officially recognized sources. Turkey - Population in the largest city - actual values, historical data, forecasts and projections were sourced from the World Bank on July of 2025.

İstanbul was by far the most populated city in Turkey in 2023, with almost **** million inhabitants. The capital city of Turkey, Ankara became the second most populated settlement, reaching a population of *** million.

Turkey TR: Population in Largest City: as % of Urban Population data was reported at 24.244 % in 2017. This records a decrease from the previous number of 24.452 % for 2016. Turkey TR: Population in Largest City: as % of Urban Population data is updated yearly, averaging 21.399 % from Dec 1960 (Median) to 2017, with 58 observations. The data reached an all-time high of 25.077 % in 2011 and a record low of 16.786 % in 1960. Turkey TR: Population in Largest City: as % of Urban Population data remains active status in CEIC and is reported by World Bank. The data is categorized under Global Database’s Turkey – Table TR.World Bank: Population and Urbanization Statistics. Population in largest city is the percentage of a country's urban population living in that country's largest metropolitan area.; ; United Nations, World Urbanization Prospects.; Weighted Average;

Context

This is a dataset consisting of landmark locations of Turkey, from 3 largest cities; Istanbul, Ankara and Izmir.

This dataset is created for the purpose of a project for machine learning class. We wanted to build a large dataset which will be used for long time, that is why pictures are not just small pictures. The program we used for classifying images can be found on my github.

Content

This data is split in test and train data. %80 of images is split for training, and the rest is for testing. The file is structured like;

-Location1 |img1.jpg |asdfghg.jpg |xxdgs.jpg -Location2 |more.jpg |pictures.jpg |with_random_names.jpg . . .

The data was collected from flickr, google images, and google places. Google places was a little bit stingy about sharing its data, so we had to find a way around. Most of the scripts which have been used for scrapping the data can be found at my github profile.

Another think to remember is the noise leftover even after so many cleaning process. Sorry for that.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thanks Serhat Saglik, who was my teammate during this project for his efforts.

This statistic displays the total rentable area per ************ persons in shopping centers in Turkey in the ************** of 2017, by major cities. In the last quarter of 2017, shopping centers in Istanbul had highest total rentable area, equaling *** square meters per thousand persons. This was only **** square meters more than the total rentable area per person in Ankara.

Graph and download economic data for Geographical Outreach: Number of Branches in 3 Largest Cities, Excluding Headquarters, for Commercial Banks for Turkey (TURFCBODCLNUM) from 2007 to 2015 about branches, Turkey, banks, and depository institutions.

The share of urban population in Turkey was 77.46 percent in 2023. In a steady upward trend, the share rose by 45.94 percentage points from 1960.

The prime office yields in Turkey did not show any significant change since June 2019 in most of the major cities. As of March 2024, prime office yields equaled 9.5 percent in Izmir, the highest of any major Turkish cities. This was followed by Ankara, which amounted to 9.25 percent.

In Turkey Railway AI Market, Ankara-Izmir high-speed railway (HSR), is being built to connect the Turkish capital, Ankara, with Izmir, the third-largest city in terms of population, and the primary Aegean port.

This gazetteer is a joint product of two research projects, UrbanOccupationsOETR (European Research Council - Starting Grant, Industrialisation and Urban Growth from the mid-nineteenth century Ottoman Empire to Contemporary Turkey in a Comparative Perspective, 1850-2000, https://urbanoccupations.ku.edu.tr, Grant agreement ID: 679097) and POPGEO_BG (Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowship, Population Geography of Bulgaria, 1500- 1920: A Historical Spatial Analysis, https://popgeo.ku.edu.tr, Grant agreement ID: 867474) both funded by the European Commission.

M. Erdem Kabadayı and Grigor Boykov have been the principal investigators of UrbanOccupationsOETR and POPGEO_BG, respectively.

This unprecedented large-scale Ottoman gazetteer is based on mid-nineteenth century population registers (NFS.d. with their archival fond) available at the Presidency of the Republic of Türkiye, Directorate of State Archives. Its current first version enlists 16.296 populated places (12.285 and 4.011 geolocated within UrbanOccupationsOETR and POPGEO_BG, respectively) extracted from 764 population registers dating between 1830 and 1849. For details of the geolocation procedure, especially for UrbanOccupationsOETR but also valid to a large extent POPGEO_BG, see:

Ma, Jilian, Akın Sefer, and M. Erdem Kabadayı. “Geolocating Ottoman Settlements: The Use of Historical Maps for Digital Humanities.” In Proceedings of the 8th International Symposium of the International Cartography Commission on the History of Cartography “Mapping the Ottoman Realm: Travelers, Cartographers and Archaeologists” 21–23 April 2020, Istanbul, Turkey (Rescheduled for December 2021, Florence, Italy), edited by Imre Josef Demhardt, Vol. 3. Göttingen: Copernicus Publications, 2021. https://doi.org/10.5194/ica-proc-3-10-2021.

The gazetteer is available in the format of a spreadsheet with 15 columns. It provides the following information for all of the 16.296 enlisted populated places:

• longitude
• latitude
• register_date_in_Hicri (calendar)
• doc_type (mufassal or icmal population registers)
• NFS.d. register_number (as in the archival fond)
• project (acronym)
• toponym_modern (current toponym in various languages depending on the location of the populated place today). For 797 populated places, toponym_modern is entered as ‘vanished.’ These populated places are all geolocated with coordinates by using georeferenced historical maps. However, no current settlements could be identified in their locations.
• toponym Ottoman in NFS.d. (typed as accurately as possible in Arabic script copying from the Ottoman population registers)
• toponym transcribed (original handwritten Ottoman to Latin script, as a principle, following the Redhouse lexicon) from NFS.d.
• kaza (the Ottoman administrative unit on the sub-district level as stated) in NFS.d.
• kaza_1848_1264 and liva_1848_1264 correspondences of enlisted kaza information in NFS.d. registers according to the official Ottoman yearbook dating to 1848 (1264 in Hicri):
  • Salname-i Devlet-i Aliye-i Osmaniye. 2nd edition. Istanbul: Darü’t-Tıbaatü’l-Amire, 1264.
• (Unique) populated place id (number)

As well as two additional administrative levels, divan and nahiye for the limited number of populated places.

POPGEO_BG was an individual fellowship; therefore, Grigor Boykov has contributed to the construction of this section of the gazetteer single-handedly, from its conceptualization to the data entry and control.

UrbanOccupationsOETR, on the other hand, sustained a large research team between 01.10.2016 and 30.09.2022 at Koç University and several team members contributed to the gazetteer in varying capacities:

M. Erdem Kabadayı conceptualized and designed the research with support from Grigor Boykov. M. Erdem Kabadayı, Akın Sefer, Grigor Boykov, and Piet Gerrits supervised the project. Piet Gerrits designed and maintained graphical user interfaces for geolocation and data entry. Akın Sefer as a team leader, located, evaluated, and selected the population registers, supervised and controlled geolocation and data entry, and conducted data curation, coding, control, and cleaning. Efe Erünal, Aysel Yıldız, and Semih Çelik also conducted source selection. Efe Erünal was also active in geolocation and data entry control.

Following UrbanOccupationsOETR team members in alphabetical order geolocated populated places and entered data into our geospatial databases: Akın Sefer, Aysel Yıldız, Barış Yıldırım, Deniz Ali Uyan, Efe Erünal, Fulya Özturan, Jilian Ma, Mertkan Karaca, Nikola Rakovski, Semih Çelik, Şehnaz İyibaş.

External researchers Furkan Elmas and Alper Kara conducted Ottoman transcription corrections and new entries under the supervision of Akın Sefer.

Piet Gerrits maintained the digital research infrastructure of the UrbanOccupationsOETR and merged the POPGEO_BG dataset to construct the gazetteer. Furthermore, he also prepared the GeoPackage and data visualization interface available at: https://urbanoccupations.ku.edu.tr/gazetteer/.

This gazetteer is a work in progress, and we would appreciate critical feedback to improve it in its following versions. Please get in touch with mkabadayi@ku.edu.tr / mekabadayi@gmail.com / grigor.boykov@univie.ac.at / griboykov@yahoo.com for your correction suggestions and inquiries.

If you would like to use the gazetteer in further publication, please use the credentials specified below:

As of the first quarter of 2024, the prime yield of high street shops in the capital city of Turkey, Ankara amounted to ***** percent. Whereas in Istanbul, this figure was realized as ***** percent.

TR：最大城市人口在12-01-2017达14,556,884.000人，相较于12-01-2016的14,365,329.000人有所增长。TR：最大城市人口数据按年更新，12-01-1960至12-01-2017期间平均值为6,188,484.500人，共58份观测结果。该数据的历史最高值出现于12-01-2017，达14,556,884.000人，而历史最低值则出现于12-01-1960，为1,453,353.000人。CEIC提供的TR：最大城市人口数据处于定期更新的状态，数据来源于World Bank，数据归类于Global Database的土耳其 – 表 TR.世界银行：人口和城市化进程统计。

TR：最大城市人口：占城镇人口百分比在12-01-2017达24.244%，相较于12-01-2016的24.452%有所下降。TR：最大城市人口：占城镇人口百分比数据按年更新，12-01-1960至12-01-2017期间平均值为21.399%，共58份观测结果。该数据的历史最高值出现于12-01-2011，达25.077%，而历史最低值则出现于12-01-1960，为16.786%。CEIC提供的TR：最大城市人口：占城镇人口百分比数据处于定期更新的状态，数据来源于World Bank，数据归类于Global Database的土耳其 – 表 TR.世界银行：人口和城市化进程统计。

The prime industrial yields in Turkey decreased from the first quarter of 2022 to the second quarter of 2022. Since then, the prime industrial yields stayed stable both for Istanbul and Ankara, amounting to *** and *** as of the first quarter of 2024, respectively.

In 2024, Russia had the largest population among European countries at ***** million people. The next largest countries in terms of their population size were Turkey at **** million, Germany at **** million, the United Kingdom at **** million, and France at **** million. Europe is also home to some of the world’s smallest countries, such as the microstates of Liechtenstein and San Marino, with populations of ****** and ****** respectively. Europe’s largest economies Germany was Europe’s largest economy in 2023, with a Gross Domestic Product of around *** trillion Euros, while the UK and France are the second and third largest economies, at *** trillion and *** trillion euros respectively. Prior to the mid-2000s, Europe’s fourth-largest economy, Italy, had an economy that was of a similar sized to France and the UK, before diverging growth patterns saw the UK and France become far larger economies than Italy. Moscow and Istanbul the megacities of Europe Two cities on the eastern borders of Europe were Europe’s largest in 2023. The Turkish city of Istanbul, with a population of 15.8 million, and the Russian capital, Moscow, with a population of 12.7 million. Istanbul is arguably the world’s most famous transcontinental city with territory in both Europe and Asia and has been an important center for commerce and culture for over 2,000 years. Paris was the third largest European city with a population of ** million, with London being the fourth largest at *** million.

The amount of online shopping done by customers in the big cities of Turkey presented different values in the first half of 2021. Citizens who lived in Istanbul accounted for ** percent of the e-commerce shopping. Citizens in other major cities such as Ankara and Izmir had only ***** and *** percent share from the overall online shopping.