The population of Turkey rose to 80.8 million, with an annual growth rate of 1.24 percent, in 2017, the Turkish Statistics Institute (TurkStat) announced on Thursday.
According to the state-run Anadolu news agency, the population of Turkey rose by nearly 1 million, up from the previous year’s figure of 79.8 million.
TurkStat said 92.5 percent of Turkey’s population lives in cities and district centers — up 0.2 percentage points — versus 7.5 percent in towns and villages.
Istanbul retained the position of Turkey’s most populous city in 2017 with 15 million, a number that is higher than the population of 129 countries, Anadolu noted.
TurkStat also stated that the country’s working age population (age 15-64) rose 1.2 percent last year to 67.9 percent (nearly 55 million people) of the total, while the population of under-15s was 23.6 percent, and the proportion of population age 65 and over was 8.5 percent.