  | |
 Courtyard of a house of Ottoman immigrants, in the Tres Sargentos Passage, Buenos Aires,c. 1912. | |
| Total population | |
| 635 (IOM)[1] | |
| Regions with significant populations | |
| Buenos Aires,Gualeguay andGualeguaychú | |
| Languages | |
| Spanish • Turkish | |
| Religion | |
| Islam · Christianity · Judaism | |
| Related ethnic groups | |
Turkish Argentines are (Spanish:Turco-Argentions;Turkish:Türk Arjantinliler)Argentine citizens of full or partialTurkish ancestry. In 2015, TheInternational Organization for Migration (IOM) estimated that there are 635 Turkish immigrants residing in Argentina.[1]
The Turkish community is small and mainly descended from Turks who arrived during the Great Immigration in Argentina in the late 19th century and early 20th century from the thenOttoman Empire, mainly duringWorld War I. Another second wave arrived duringWorld War II. Some third generation descendants are fluent in Turkish.[2] The community, which is very active, is usually seen at the Immigrant's Day celebration in Buenos Aires, thanks to an invitation from the National Migration Directorate.[3]
Most of the immigrants arriving since the Ottoman Empire wereArabs (mainly Syrians and Lebanese), while another number were Sephardic Jews andArmenians. Despite this, the Arab-Argentines are mistakenly nicknamedTurks. An example of this is the nickname of the former presidentCarlos Saúl Menem.[4][2] This is due to the arrival of immigrants they were noted as "Turkish-Ottomans", appearing in the same way in the first Argentine censuses.[5][6] In 1914, the "Turkish-Ottomans" represented 1.9% of the foreign population, being the fifth largest immigration.[7]
At the beginning of the 1900s, a Turkish-Ottoman neighborhood was developed in theCatalinas Norte area of the Buenos Aires neighborhood of Retiro, which stretched for 200 meters above the Reconquista Street. The sector concentrated most of the 8,000 Ottomans in Buenos Aires. Many of them were merchants and had their own newspapers.