One way to begin to understand the social, political, and economic changes in Turkey since 1980 is to focus on the rapid urbanization process. As in many other developing countries, Turkey’s population increased rapidly after World War II, and rural-to-urban migration gained momentum. Even though the population growth rate slowed after 1980, rapid urbanization continued. As a result, the share in the total population of those living in urban centers of more than ten thousand people increased from around 18 percent in 1950 to 45 percent in 1980, and to about 80 percent in 2015. Close to two-thirds of the country’s population in 2015 were either the children or grandchildren of migrants to urban areas or migrants themselves. We will argue in this chapter that the migration of tens of millions of people from rural to urban areas put great pressure on Turkey’s emerging democracy and created an opening for the Islamist parties.