In 1980, Ethnologue estimated the number of Kurdish-speakers in Turkey at around five million, when the country's population stood at 44 million. Kurds form the largest minority group in Turkey, and they have posed the most serious and persistent challenge to the official image of a homogeneous society. To deny an existence of Kurds, the Turkish Government used several terms. "Mountain Turks" was a term was initially used by . In 1961, in a foreword to the book Doğu İlleri ve Varto Tarihi of Mehmet Şerif Fırat, the Turkish president Cemal Gürsel declared it of utmost importance to prove the Turkishness of the Kurds. Eastern Turk was another euphemism for Kurds from 1980 onwards. Nowadays the Kurds, in Turkey, are still known under the name Easterner (Doğulu).
