Abdulkadir Atıcı

Today’s Iranian geography is extremely important in terms of Turcology studies. This geography, which has a deep history and civilization, is a rich treasure both with its historical background and today. In order to discover and understand this treasure, many disciplines seek answers to important questions from their own point of view in Iranian Turcology studies and share the data they have obtained with the scientific world in a way that different disciplines can use. In this context, one of the important questions of Iranian Turcology studies is: “What is the Turkish population in today’s Iran?”. This article will focus on the population and ethnic data of the province of Hamadan in Iran. In this sense, the framework of our study consists of the data in the study titled “History of Political Divisions of Hamadan Province” published by Ahmad Heydari in 2020. The data on ethnic groups in Heydari’s study were determined by us and answers were sought to the questions of which ethnic groups, especially Turks, live in the province of Hamadan today and what is their population. While dealing with the subject, the deductive method was applied first; Necessary information is presented in a row starting from Iran to the province of Hamadan. While presenting the population and ethnic data of the province of Hamadan, the inductive method was applied and the data were arranged in an order to cover the entire province, starting from the villages. Finally, the quantitative data consisting of numbers were subjected to a qualitative analysis and concrete outputs were obtained about all ethnic groups, especially Turks, in the province of Hamadan. The tangible outputs have shown that the Turkish population constitutes approximately 60% of the total population of Hamadan province. In the province, after the Turks, the Lors are 17.09%, respectively; Persians 10.49%; Leks were determined as 7.80% and Kurds as 4.81% population groups. When we look at the geographical distribution of ethnic groups throughout the province, Turks are the ethnic group with the most population in approximately 60% of the province of Hamadan. In the remaining 40%, it was concluded that other ethnic groups had the majority of the population. Considering the center of Hamadan province, it is seen that the Turkish population from the center to the north, Kurdish from the center to the west, Lor and Lek from the center to the south and southwest, and Persian population from the center to the southeast and east.

Keywords: Iranian, Hamadan Province, Ethnic Groups, Turkish Population.