Western Asia · data through 2024
Türkiye hosts one of the largest refugee populations in the world while retaining a very large community in western Europe built over sixty years.
Twenty five year view
These lines show migrant stock, meaning people living outside their birth country at each point in time. They do not show annual arrivals.
Why people move
Guest worker agreements from the nineteen sixties created lasting communities in Germany, the Netherlands, and Austria. Since 2011, Türkiye has hosted millions of Syrians under temporary protection, alongside Afghan and Iraqi arrivals.
Connections
Common destinations
Germany, Netherlands, France, Austria, United States, United Kingdom
Common origins
Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Turkmenistan
Adapting and finding support
Temporary protection restricts where people may live and work. Third generation Turkish families in Europe navigate belonging in two countries at once.
Provincial migration offices handle status, and legal aid clinics handle appeals.
Use the support guideResearch that explains this pattern
Anthropology
Many families are not here or there but genuinely both, with money, decisions, care, and authority moving constantly across the border.
Integration and continued attachment to home rise together rather than trading off.
Nina Glick Schiller, Linda Basch, and Cristina Blanc Szanton
Psychology
Children of immigrants do not follow one path. Outcomes depend on the parents' resources, the strength of the community, and the reception they meet.
The same family can produce very different outcomes across cities and school systems.
Alejandro Portes and Rubén Rumbaut, segmented assimilation
Psychology
Repeated discrimination, vigilance, and the expectation of rejection accumulate into a chronic health burden.
Health outcomes worsen with time in a hostile setting, even as income and language improve.
Ilan Meyer, minority stress model, extended to immigrant populations
Support inside and beyond Türkiye
Official information on residence, temporary protection, and status procedures.
Foreign nationals in Türkiye
OpenCountry by country guidance for refugees, people seeking asylum, and stateless people.
Refugees and people seeking asylum
OpenFamily tracing, first aid, food, shelter, and restoring family links.
People in transit and newly arrived families
OpenThese are public organisations. The project is not affiliated with them and cannot guarantee outcomes. Nothing here is legal advice or an emergency service.
Figures are rounded published estimates. Causes and adaptation differ within every country and should not be read as a verdict about any person.