Turkey has a population of 66 million people and is made up almost entirely of two ethnic groups: Turks and Kurds. There are four times as many Turks as Kurds. How many Kurds live in Turkey?

1 Answer
Apr 5, 2018

13.2 million

Explanation:

We will make two equations from this word problem since there are two pieces of information.

I'm going to give "Turks"Turks the variable tt and "Kurds"Kurds the variable kk.

Since Turkey's population of 66 million is the combination of Turks and Kurds, we can make this equation:

t + k = "66,000,000"t+k=66,000,000

And since the four times as many Turks as Kurds, we can make this second equation:

t= 4kt=4k

Now substitute that into the first equation and solve:

t + k = "66,000,000"t+k=66,000,000

(4k) + k = "66,000,000"(4k)+k=66,000,000

5k = "66,000,000"5k=66,000,000

k = "13,200,000"k=13,200,000

The total number of Kurds is 13.2 million.