A Grammar of Turkish Sign Language (TİD)

The reports on the deaf population in Turkey give disparate numbers. Moreover, the nature of the questions is influenced by different purposes which do not allow a coherent estimation of the sign language community. For example, the categories of hearing loss, and language-speech disorders include non-signer individuals as well, which complicates estimations. According to the Turkey Disability Survey that was carried out by the Prime Ministerial office in 2002, the occurrence of ‘hearing disability’ is 250.000 in the general population of 70 million. Taking into account the population increase reported and the prevalence of deafness at 0.37 percent, İlkbaşaran estimates the figure to be 284.000 deaf people in 2013 (among 77 million).

Another estimate comes from a screening of newborns which indicates a 0.2% prevalence of deafness. If better healthcare leads to an increase in identifying hearing loss, the prevalence could be 0.5-0.6 percent. Based on this, İlkbaşaran’s alternative estimate of deaf population for 2013 is between 380.000 and 450.000. As for the number of sign language users, the only evidence comes from Gürboğa and Kargın’s study with 100 deaf participants from Ankara above the age of 25. This study has found that 75% of deaf individuals identify TİD as their first language. Though this small sample collected from a single region is not representative of Turkey, we can roughly reckon that the number of sign language users in Turkey is between 187.500 to 337.500.