Demographic Data on Syrians in Turkey: What do we know?

With the outbreak of civil war in Syria, Turkey has become the host of the largest refugee population in the world. In a country where reliable population registration systems are only recently established and where no extensive legal arrangements on migration existed prior to the Syrian crisis, the whole refugee situation was handled rather unsystematically, with ever-changing institutions and regulations, and various iterations of both. In this paper we present the demographic statistics that have been made public by different sources from the beginning of the crisis up to today because they are hard to reach in one place accompanied by relevant institutional changes; with the aim of assessing the current demographic data and revealing what is missing.