Turkish people first began to immigrate to
Canada in small numbers from the
Ottoman Empire, and significantly in the late 1950s and early 1960s when the
Turkish government encouraged student education abroad. There have also been Turks fleeing from unrest and oppression in
Bulgaria and
Cyprus who arrived in Canada as
political and
economic refugees. By 1911, the size of the Muslim community had increased to about 1,500, of whom 1,000 were of
Turkish origin and the remainder were
Arabs. With the Canadian Immigration Act of 1910, immigrating to the country was banned. This policy wasn't changed until 1978. The reason behind this
xenophobic act was the government’s claim that immigrants were hard to
assimilate. This nativism lasted four years till the ban was lifted because the Canadian economy needed cheap
immigrant labour.
Internment of 1914 The Ottoman Empire declared
war on Britain in November 5, 1914. Only five days later, on November 10, 1914, 98 Turks were deported and settled in
Kingston and then in
Kapuskasing. Their number increased over time. They weren’t the only “enemy aliens” subjected to internment. More than 8,500 people were placed in 24 camps during the war. Of them 205 were Turks. Most were from the
Eastern Anatolia region's
Harput. Many foreigners have been interned for wanting to leave Canada, which in the eyes of the government posed a threat. Others were sent to the camps because they had suspicious activities. It is possible that a letter from the Armenian missionary of Brantford, Armen Amirkhanian, influenced the city council. He wrote to Brantford City Council, claiming that Armenians were loyal to Britain, and that they were not ethnic Turks. He also mentioned
the massacres that took place, and that the Armenians suffered a lot because of the Turks. His letter showed results and news of Armenians loyal to Britain that appearеd in the newspapers. According to other newspapers, Turks in the city had tried to bomb a newly created post office. The truth of this statement is debatable, as many Turks in Canada couldn't even read or write. Also, many of these Turks left Eastern Anatolia to earn enough money to buy land in their homeland and live in their native places. Despite these misunderstandings, the Armenian community, also from Harput, tried to help these Turks. In 2014, the Turkish consul of Canada visited the cemetery. Some people, especially the Canadian-Armenian community had claimed that it is a political act and created
online petition to “stop the fake monument”. The Muslim plot of the Mount Hope cemetery exists since 1912 and seven names belong to men that died before the 1914 events. Many added that before a century, everyone in the Ottoman empire was known as “Turk”. Seven of the graves belonged to men that died before the 1914 events. These actions tried to prevent a memorial plaque describing the events of 1914 from being erected on the site. According to an Armenian, “
identifying (those buried in the plot) with Turkey and the Turkish government would be an injustice.” He also claimed that the buried people are actually
Alevi Muslims, “
the idea of having a monument endorsed by the Turkish government that incorrectly labels Alevi as though they were Turks is a “real injustice”, For many this was a
Turcophobic act. There were claims that this was similar to the
Armenian genocide denial. Barçın Yinanç wrote "
it would have been much wiser to come and attend the ceremony and perhaps give messages or letters to the Turkish ambassador, asking the Turkish state to show the same sensitivity to the thousands of dead Armenians". Significant Turkish immigration began during the 1960s and 1970s; most Turks went to Canada for educational and economic opportunities.
Greece There have been several waves of migration from the
Turkish minority of Western Thrace to Canada. The first wave of Turkish Western Thracian migration started in the 1960s and intensified between 1970-2010 due to political and economic reasons; this was followed by a significantly larger wave in 2010-18 due to the
Greek government-debt crisis.
Romania According to Dr Eleanor Bujea, the early history of Turkish Romanians in Canada (which began in the 1910s) is similar to that of Jewish Romanians. Many initially homesteaded and raised their families on farms whilst some went into the grocery businesses or opened street carts. After the
First World War, many of these people moved to large cities where some intermarried and assimilated.
Migration from the Levant Cyprus During the 1950s,
Turkish Cypriots started to leave
Cyprus for political reasons when the
Greek Cypriots held a referendum in which 95.7% of Greek Cypriots supported
enosis, the union of Cyprus with
Greece. By 1963, inter-ethnic fighting broke out in
Cyprus, with
Turkish Cypriots bearing the heavier cost in terms of casualties and some 25,000 Turkish Cypriots became internally displaced accounting to about a fifth of their population. Tension continued to grow by the late 1960s and approximately 60,000 Turkish Cypriots left their homes and moved into enclaves due to intercommunal violence, fearing their safety as the minority on the island.. This resulted in an
exodus of more Turkish Cypriots from the island, many migrating to
Canada.
Iraq In 2010 there was approximately 1,000
Iraqi Turks living in Canada.
Syria Since
Justin Trudeau was elected as
Prime Minister of Canada in 2015, over 25,000 Syrian
refugees have settled in Canada; these have included Arabs,
Syrian Kurds and
Syrian Turks as well as other minority groups. == Demographics ==