I think I first heard it from Bernard Lewis – Turks’ endless fascination in moving westwards. He writes of the move from Central Asia into Anatolia and the Balkans, and then ties it to modern Turkey’s bid for the European Union. Regardless of Lewis’ politics, he was on to something. Have a look at the population movements within the country in the last 50-something years. Turkey is a country on the move. Turks, Kurds and others in the Eastern provinces are still picking up and moving West. Even a cursory glance at the numbers will tell you that Western cities grow disproportionately.

Let’s divide Turkey into three parts according to population dynamics. Picture the map and assume that there are two vertical lines dividing the country into three: One down from Kocaeli to Antalya, both cities remaining in the western part, and a second line from Trabzon to Şanlıurfa. The rest is the eastern part of Turkey. In 1965, the country’s population was evenly distributed between the western, central and eastern parts. That remained more or less the same in 1980. The west had an uptick from 34% to 39%, but both eastern and central parts had a population of over 30%, which is not a significant change. In 2000 however, you see the western part swelling up to 44% while central Turkey declined to 30% and the east to 26%. In 2012, these shares were 49%, 28% and 23% respectively. That means that the western share of the total population increased by 15% since 1965.

These, mind you, only include people who moved permanently. There is also a considerable population that still moves west for seasonal jobs. Those jobs used to be exclusively in agriculture, but now include things like mining or shipyard work in western provinces.

Why do Turks move west? I think it’s because those parts are much more integrated to the European economy. It is migration out of economic necessity. People uproot their lives to give their children a better future.

This commentary was published in Hürriyet Daily News on 23.08.2014