Istanbul home to largest number of Syrians in Turkey

By Muhammed Boztepe

ANKARA

Turkey’s largest city, hosts the largest number of Syrian refugees in the country, who fled the seven-year devastating civil war, according to Turkey's migration authority. 

Turkey hosts some 3.4 million Syrian refugees, the largest number in the world.

Nearly 538,000 Syrians live in Istanbul, a metropolis with a population of almost 15 million, according to an analysis of data from the Interior Ministry’s Migration Management Directorate. 

Syrians make up 3.63 percent of Istanbul’s total population, according to the agency. 

Turkey’s southeastern province of Sanliurfa hosts nearly 463,000 Syrians, while over 457,000 Syrians live in the Hatay province on the Turkish-Syrian border. 

In the southeastern border province of Kilis, there are some 132,000 Syrians present, while the city’s non-refugee population is about 131,000 -- making the number of registered Syrians higher than the city’s regular population. 

The lowest number of Syrians, a mere 57, live in the Bayburt province in the Black Sea region. 

According to the data, there are 3.42 million registered Syrian refugees in Turkey. While 1.85 million of them are male, 1.57 million are female. 

Some 2.46 million of the refugees are under 29 years old, and there are over 515,000 children age 4 and under. 

Over 228,000 Syrians are living in 21 camps in 10 provinces of Turkey, according to the agency. 

Syria has been locked in a vicious civil war since 2011, when the Assad regime cracked down on pro-democracy protests with unexpected ferocity. Since then, hundreds of thousands of people have been killed in the conflict, according to the UN.