Local authorities seeking to boost their budgets resulted in Turkey
counting at least 3.65 million non-existent people in a national census in 2000.
"It has been established so far that 3,651,000 people were recorded as
imaginary population," Sefik Yildizeli, the country's chief statistician,
told reporters Thursday.
Officials acknowledge that the 2000 census, which reported a national
population of 64,059,000, was distorted by fake counts at scores of municipalities,
whose state budgets are tied to population size. Statisticians are trying to
strip the results of the corrupted data and revise the figures.
Dick Eastman Online
