U.S. Census Bureau to count Azerbaijanis and Turks in U.S. next year

Turkish and Azerbaijani Diaspora organizations will start a country wide campaign in order to call on Diaspora members to participate in this process.

In order to be considered as Azerbaijanis and Turks, Diaspora members are required to indicate "other" in the nationality column and then specify to which nationality they belong to.

“There was such population counting before, but Azerbaijanis never had a chance to introduce themselves," Azerbaijani Diaspora member Eldar Jabbarov said.

According to him, this step is very important in terms of lobbying.

 “Is will be the first time that Azerbaijanis and Turks will have a opportunity to find out the official number of Diaspora members”.

According to unofficial estimations, nearly 500,000 Turks and 100,000 Azerbaijanis live in the U.S.

The population counting form will be send to every family in the U.S. in March 2010.

“The forms will also be provided in Turkish," a source at the U.S. Census Bureau said.

/APA/