page_title: Turks of Romania
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Turks of Romania / History
caption_attribution_description: Ethnic map of northern Dobruja at the beginning of the XXth century.
context_page_description: The Turks of Romania, also known as Romanian Turks, are ethnic Turks who form an ethnic minority in Romania. According to the 2011 census, there were 28,226 Turks living in the country, forming a minority of some 0.15% of the population. Of these, 81.1% were recorded in the Dobruja region of the country's southeast, near the Black Sea, in the counties of Constanța and Tulcea, with a further 8.5% residing in the national capital Bucharest.
context_section_description: Turkic settlement has a long history in the Dobruja region, various groups such as Bulgars, Pechenegs, Cumans and Turkmen settling in the region between the 7th and 13th centuries, and probably contributing to the formation of a Christian autonomous polity in the 14th century. An important event in the history of the Turkish population was however the Ottoman conquest of the region in the early 15th century. Hence, by the 17th century most of the settlements in Dobruja had Turkish names, either due to colonisations or through assimilation of the Islamised pre-Ottoman Turkic populations. In the nineteenth century, Turks and Tatars were more numerous in Dobruja than the Romanians.
caption: Turks (dark purple) in Northern Dobruja (1903)
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