It’s an obvious fact that the Turkmen do not only live in their native Turkmenistan, but also in other Central Asian states and in the Middle East. Lately I have decided to surf the net to count them.

The largest groups of Turkmen living outside Turkmenistan can be found in Iran (around 1.1 million), Afghanistan (around 900 thousand), Pakistan (60 thousand, mainly refugees from Afghanistan of a Turkmen origin), and Russia (33 thousand).

Sometimes the Iraqi Turkmen are also classified as the Turkmen nation (they are more frequently called Turkomans). However, most of the sources consider them to be a different ethnic group, albeit closely related to the Turkmen proper. No one knows exactly how many of them are there (according to estimations, their number oscillates between 200 thousand to 2.5 million). In Iraq, they are a persecuted minority. Interesting information on the Iraqi Turkmen can be found here.
The Russian Turkmen predominantly inhabit the Stavropol region in Southern Russia. They are also called the Trukhmen. Even though they came to the Caucasus from the Mangyshlak peninsula on the turn of the 17 and 18th centuries, they have sustained their sense of affiliation with the Turkmen nation. Interestingly, the number of the Turkmen in Russia dropped by 5 thousand compared to 1989, whereas the number of other Central Asian diasporas in this country rose considerably.

The 1989 census also showed that a vast Turkmen community can be found in Uzbekistan. At the time there were over 120 thousand of them. Today we lack credible data concerning this issue, as the Uzbek authorities avoid demonstrating the multiethnicity of their state. It’s worth adding that in 1989 around 20 thousand Turkmen also lived in Tajikistan.

Even though the data available is often quite discrepant, we may assume that there are around 6 million of the Turkmen living over the world (excluding the Iraqi Turkmen). Quite a lot, don’t you think?