A single neighborhood can hold as many voters as an entire district. Türkiye's most populous neighborhood by voters has a larger electoral roll than 785 of the country's 973 districts.
Press stories about "the most crowded neighborhood" recur with every census and always rest on the same source: TÜİK population. But election data asks a different question: how many voters does a neighborhood have? YSK does not publish a nationwide neighborhood ranking, yet neighborhood totals can be computed from the ballot-box-level official data. We built this list that way — and it places two very different Türkiye stories side by side.
At the top of the list, Bağcılar (in Diyarbakır's Bağlar district) is district-scale on its own, with more than 95,000 voters. The combined electorate of 785 of Türkiye's 973 districts is smaller than this single neighborhood — meaning Bağcılar has a larger electoral roll than roughly four-fifths of the country's districts. (The comparison is between a neighborhood's voters and a district's voters; not population.)
Eleven of the top fifteen are in İstanbul; the rest are in Diyarbakır (two neighborhoods), Kayseri and Ankara (one each). The concentration is no surprise: most voters are clustered in the outer districts of a few big cities.
| # | Neighborhood | District / Province | Voters (2023) | vs. 2011 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Bağcılar | Bağlar / Diyarbakır | 95,072 | surged 6.7× · 2011: 14,199 |
| 2 | Adnan Kahveci | Beylikdüzü / İstanbul | 71,727 | grew 2.3× · 2011: 30,607 |
| 3 | Atakent | Küçükçekmece / İstanbul | 71,478 | grew 1.8× · 2011: 39,514 |
| 4 | Kayabaşı | Başakşehir / İstanbul | 63,726 | surged 19.4× · 2011: 3,277 |
| 5 | Zümrütevler | Maltepe / İstanbul | 62,980 | grew 1.6× · 2011: 39,004 |
| 6 | Mevlana | Talas / Kayseri | 61,547 | surged 3.2× · 2011: 19,329 |
| 7 | Fırat | Kayapınar / Diyarbakır | 59,833 | no 2011 record |
| 8 | Karapürçek | Altındağ / Ankara | 59,222 | grew 2.3× · 2011: 25,691 |
| 9 | Zafer | Bahçelievler / İstanbul | 58,994 | flat 1.04× · 2011: 56,793 |
| 10 | İçerenköy | Ataşehir / İstanbul | 57,089 | flat 1.01× · 2011: 56,423 |
| 11 | Halkalı Merkez | Küçükçekmece / İstanbul | 56,626 | grew 1.3× · 2011: 42,734 |
| 12 | İnönü | Küçükçekmece / İstanbul | 53,162 | flat 1.14× · 2011: 46,548 |
| 13 | Soğanlı | Bahçelievler / İstanbul | 51,868 | shrank 0.98× · 2011: 52,771 |
| 14 | Kocasinan Merkez | Bahçelievler / İstanbul | 51,781 | grew 1.18× · 2011: 44,022 |
| 15 | Yeşilkent | Avcılar / İstanbul | 50,385 | grew 1.3× · 2011: 38,640 |
What is most striking is how these neighborhoods grew. Comparing the 2023 figures with the 2011 parliamentary election splits the list into several groups.
The ones that surged. Some neighborhoods became unrecognizable in twelve years. Başakşehir's Kayabaşı had just 3,277 voters in 2011; by 2023 it reached 63,726 — nearly twenty times. This increase carries the typical mark of new mass-housing developments and rapid construction. Diyarbakır's Bağcılar grew from 14,199 to 95,072 (6.7×), and Kayseri's Mevlana (Talas) from 19,329 to 61,547 (3.2×).
The ones that stayed put. Other neighborhoods on the same list have barely changed in twelve years. Bahçelievler's Zafer had 56,793 voters in 2011 and 58,994 in 2023 — about 4 percent. Ataşehir's İçerenköy went from 56,423 to 57,089, a 1.2 percent rise. These are earlier-settled, relatively established neighborhoods, so their voter growth appears to have stayed very limited.
Some even shrank. Bahçelievler's Soğanlı fell from 52,771 voters in 2011 to 51,868 in 2023. A slight decline in central, long-established neighborhoods can be explained by urban renewal and the shift of population toward the periphery.
Fırat, in Diyarbakır's Kayapınar district, ranks seventh in 2023 with 59,833 voters — but there is no separate neighborhood recorded under the name Fırat in the 2011 election data. The neighborhood may therefore have been established later, or registered under a different administrative name at the time. Kayapınar is a relatively new, fast-growing district; the two Diyarbakır neighborhoods on the list (Bağcılar and Fırat) both reflect that growth.
This list deliberately differs from TÜİK's "most crowded neighborhood" reports. Population counts infants and those under voting age; the electoral roll counts only those eligible to vote. A young neighborhood may rank high by population but lower by voters. Even so, the two measures meet at the top: Diyarbakır's Bağcılar — also Türkiye's most populous neighborhood in TÜİK's population ranking (over 160,000 residents) — is first by voters too. But the sole measure in this article is the number of voters.
Data and method. Source: Supreme Election Council (acikveri.ysk.gov.tr), ballot-box-level official results. The ranking uses registered voters in the 14 May 2023 parliamentary election; the 2011 comparison uses the 12 June 2011 parliamentary election. "Neighborhood" is the YSK's muhtarlık unit; each neighborhood total is computed by deduplicating on ballot-box ID and cross-checked against the raw records. A parliamentary election is used for the nationwide ranking; the Provincial General Assembly election is not held in metropolitan provinces, so İstanbul and Diyarbakır would not appear at all in that data. Neighborhoods with the same name are separate units; each row represents a single province, district and muhtarlık.
© Sandık Atlası · Impartial, sources visible.