Migrations in Eastern Anatolia and evaluation of their demographic results

The subject of this study is internal migrations in the Eastern Anatolia Region and the evaluation of their demographic results. Today, rapid changes in living conditions have caused people to migrate more. The migration of people from the places where they were born or resided due to the effect of repulsive or attractive factors has led to the emergence of many problems, especially economic, social, political, demographic, cultural, and spatial problems in both sending and receiving places. The inability to solve these problems, which arise due to migration, in a timely manner, leads to larger problems in the future. In Turkey, the Eastern Anatolia Region is one of the regions where significant internal migration mobility is experienced. Although there are many reasons for migration, the most important reasons for migration in the region are socioeconomic, political, and natural reasons. Due to the fact that there are many repulsive factors affecting human life in the region, the migrations of the region in the years when the research was conducted were more than the migrations it received. For this reason, both the absolute migration and the absolute migration rate of the region showed negative values. In the region, which constantly gives positive immigration, especially due to economic reasons, the flow direction of migration is towards socioeconomically developed and industrialized western provinces. Immigration not only affected the economic, social, political, cultural, and spatial structure of the Eastern Anatolia Region but also caused significant changes in its demographic structure. The most important of these demographic changes is their impact on the development and structure of the population. As a matter of fact, although birth rates are high in the region, migration has a negative effect on the development of the region's population. At the same time, due to immigration, the proportion of the population born in the Eastern Anatolia Region residing in the region, in other words, the local population, has shown a decreasing trend in recent years. Migrations have affected the structure of the population as well as its quantity. Therefore, the fact that men participate in migration movements more than women and the young population more than the elderly population has caused a greater decrease in the male population and the young population in the total population of the region. In this study, which was evaluated according to the principles and methods of geography, the characteristics, size, causes and flow directions of internal migration in the region were investigated by making use of internal migration and birthplace population data. In the study, the data obtained by utilizing the general census data of DIE and TUIK were transferred to the Microsoft Excel programme and then these data were converted into tables, graphs, and maps. The maps were made in the Arcgis 10.8 program, which is one of the geographic information systems programs.