2.  200 million people speak Turkic languages around the world.

3.  Turkish is a member of the Oghuz group of languages, a subgroup of the Turkic language family, which includes such languages as Kyrgyz, Uzbek, Mongolian, Kazakh, etc..  Turkic languages are part of the larger Altaic language family, including Mongol, Korean.

4.  About 40% of all speakers of Turkic languages are native Turkish speakers.  Spoken throughout Turkey as first or second language.

5.  Modern descendant of Ottoman Turkish  Turkish, Arabic, Persian, Greek, French vocabulary  NATIVE: 60 million speakers  2 nd language: 15 million speakers  TOTAL: 75 million people in Turkey speaks Turkish.

6.  According to conservative estimates, there are approximately 350,000 Americans of Turkish descent living across the United States. (Turkish American Community)  According to Census.gov there are 5.839 Turks living in Virginia.

7.  Turkish one of the StarTalk language.  STARTALK is a national program that provides critical language education for students K-16, professional development for critical language teachers, and resources for the world language teaching and learning field.  Since 2009 StarTalk has been running a Turkish program in Fauquier County – Virginia.

8.  2014 StarTalk has 7 Turkish programs. Two of them are for students, five of them for teachers.