[URBAN NOTE] On the Turkish-Canadians
Jun. 20th, 2008 07:37 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rfmcdonaldI heard about Turkey's dramatic victory over Croatia in Euro 2008 for the first time only a few hours before I heard and saw it the streets of Toronto. Cars and minivans filled with happy people waving Turkish flags in plenty of different sizes, every one honking as they drove, in turn honking to greet other Turkish-driven vehicles, third parties in their own turn honking or yelling mostly in sympathy, et cetera. It has been going on for a while: When I disembarked from the Bloor-Yonge subway station at 6:30, the processions of soccer fans were going, and it's still going on as I write, around 7:30 when I'm well past Bloor and Bathurst--a distance of nearly two kilometres from my starting point. ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
thebitterguy reports that the flag-waving was also happening on Highway 401, too.
This current visibility (and audibility) aside, the Turkish-Canadian community is relatively small, a consequence--as Multicultural Canada points out--of the fact that Turkish immigration to Canada only began around 1960. There might be something like forty thousand Turkish-Canadians, taking issues of ethnic identity and citizenship and chosen identity into account as much as one can. (Many Turkish-Canadians can trace their ancestry to Bulgaria and Cyprus, for instance.) One source dating from the time of the 1999 Izmit earthquake plausibly claims that one-third of Canada's Turkish-Canadian population, roughly fifteen thousand people, lives in the Greater Toronto Area. As Multicultural Canada also points out, Turkish-Canadians constitute an occupationally diverse group that encompasses everyone from tenured professors to unskilled workers.
I'm not inclined to expect that much more growth in the size of the Turkish-Canadian community, if only because, at present, Turkish immigrants seem to tend to go to the European countries that had earlier admitted Turkish migrants. This may certainly change, of course, and even now there are easily more Turkish-Canadians than there are Charlottetowners. In the meantime, Turkish-Canadians are certainly making their presence known!
thebitterguy reports that the flag-waving was also happening on Highway 401, too.This current visibility (and audibility) aside, the Turkish-Canadian community is relatively small, a consequence--as Multicultural Canada points out--of the fact that Turkish immigration to Canada only began around 1960. There might be something like forty thousand Turkish-Canadians, taking issues of ethnic identity and citizenship and chosen identity into account as much as one can. (Many Turkish-Canadians can trace their ancestry to Bulgaria and Cyprus, for instance.) One source dating from the time of the 1999 Izmit earthquake plausibly claims that one-third of Canada's Turkish-Canadian population, roughly fifteen thousand people, lives in the Greater Toronto Area. As Multicultural Canada also points out, Turkish-Canadians constitute an occupationally diverse group that encompasses everyone from tenured professors to unskilled workers.
I'm not inclined to expect that much more growth in the size of the Turkish-Canadian community, if only because, at present, Turkish immigrants seem to tend to go to the European countries that had earlier admitted Turkish migrants. This may certainly change, of course, and even now there are easily more Turkish-Canadians than there are Charlottetowners. In the meantime, Turkish-Canadians are certainly making their presence known!
