Older People Living Alone in Çorum: Loneliness Near the Top of Turkey's Rankings

Older people living alone in Çorum rank near the top in Turkey. What do TÜİK figures say, how can loneliness be spotted and what can families do? Read on.

Curtains drawn after the evening call to prayer, a table laid for one, a house waiting for the phone to ring... Older people living alone in Çorum have now become visible in the statistics as well. According to local news reports citing the 2025 Family Statistics of TÜİK (the Turkish Statistical Institute), almost half of all single-person households in Çorum consist of someone aged 65 or over living on their own. With this figure, Çorum ranks third in Turkey, after Balıkesir and Burdur. In an older calculation, it even appeared as the province with the highest share of older single-person households in the country. In this article we look together at what the numbers tell us, the social factors behind this picture, and what loneliness means for an older person and their family.

Older People Living Alone in Çorum: What Do the Figures Say?

Let us start with the basic picture. According to TÜİK's 2025 Family Statistics, Çorum has around 185,000 households, and 23.8% of them are single-person households. In Turkey as a whole, the figure is 20.5%. What really stands out, however, is who lives in these single-person households: in Çorum, 46.8% of them are made up of someone aged 65 or over. Across Turkey, the same figure is 33.2%, or roughly one in three.

When a rough calculation is made from the household estimate reported in local news, the number of older people living on their own in Çorum is thought to be in the region of 20,000. This is not an exact figure, but an estimate that gives a sense of scale.

The pre-feasibility report on elderly care published in 2021 by the Central Black Sea Development Agency (OKA) includes an older indicator, citing TÜİK: in Çorum, the share of older households among all single-person households was 53.4%, the highest value in Turkey. According to the same report, the proportion of older people in Çorum who say "I am happy" is 49.7%, the third-lowest value in Turkey. And 94.4% of older people live in the province where they were born, which makes Çorum the province with the third-highest figure on this measure.

The general population structure feeding into these figures also matters:

• Share of older people: According to TÜİK's 2025 Address-Based Population Registration System data, people aged 65 and over make up 17.87% of Çorum's population (92,844 people). In Turkey, this figure is 11.1%. Çorum ranks eighth among 81 provinces on this indicator.
• Median age: 41.3 in Çorum and 34.9 in Turkey.
• Household size: The average household has 2.71 people; the Turkish average is 3.08.

The limits of the data

A few points need to be kept in mind when reading these figures. The 2025 values come from local news reports quoting TÜİK bulletins; the primary provincial table should be checked separately. The "first in Turkey" finding in the OKA report refers to the 2019–2020 period and may have been calculated differently. Moreover, living alone is not the same as feeling lonely. An older person who lives on their own may be part of a busy network of neighbours, while someone living in a crowded home may feel deeply lonely. Figures tell us about risk; they do not describe the inner world of individual people.

Why Does This Picture Emerge? A Sociological Reading

There is no study specific to the province explaining why older people in Çorum so often live alone. Even so, the data point to some possible factors. These are not definitive causes, but structural factors that may help us understand the picture.

Young people moving out of the province. Çorum has been losing population to other provinces for years. In 2025, 17,208 people left Çorum for other provinces while 15,597 arrived. The link with Ankara is especially strong: in 2024, 8,386 people moved from Çorum to Ankara, while only 3,486 moved from Ankara to Çorum. When children leave for the big city to study or work, their parents often stay behind in their home town.

A deeply rooted life. The fact that 94.4% of older people live in the province where they were born points to a strong attachment to place. For many older people, leaving their home, garden, neighbours, mosque and family graves to move in with a son or daughter is not an easy decision. According to TÜİK migration data, in 2025 the number of people who left Çorum for health or care reasons (208) was about 2.5 times the number who arrived for the same reasons (83). This difference suggests that some older people eventually move to live near their children; but since there is no breakdown by age, this is an interpretation.

Smaller households and fewer births. The total fertility rate in Çorum is 1.22 (Turkey: 1.42). Fewer children means that the burden of care in later life falls on fewer shoulders.

Losing a spouse. Women generally live longer than their husbands. According to a source that compiles TÜİK data by province, 8.2% of Çorum's population aged 15 and over have lost their spouse. The 2025 statistics of the Social Security Institution (SGK) show 24,062 women in Çorum receiving a survivor's pension after the death of their husband. Being left alone in a home shared for many years, after the loss of a spouse, is one of the most common routes into living alone in later life.

Limited institutional care. According to OKA's 2021 report, the capacity of public care homes in Çorum in 2020 was 132 beds, with an occupancy rate of 98.5%. Most care is provided within the family and at home; which means that when the family is far away, the older person stays at home alone.

A protective fabric: neighbourliness. Seeing only the risk side of the picture would be incomplete. In small and medium-sized Anatolian towns, ties between neighbours, relatives and people in the same neighbourhood are still strong. The first person to notice that an older person's door has not opened one day is often the neighbour downstairs, the local grocer or an acquaintance who prays at the same mosque. This fabric acts as a safety net for older people living alone, in places that formal services cannot reach. But this net is also wearing thin over time: neighbours are getting older, some pass away, and some move to live with their children. In Çorum, where village and small-town populations still account for around a quarter of the province's population, this thinning may be felt more quickly by older people who remain in villages whose populations are shrinking.

The Psychological Side of Living Alone

Not every older person who lives alone is unhappy. Some are content with their own routine, their independence and their quiet. However, living alone can lay the ground for certain psychological risks.

Emotional and social loneliness

Loneliness in later life can be experienced in two ways. Emotional loneliness is the absence of someone close to confide in; it often deepens after the loss of a spouse. Social loneliness is the feeling of not belonging to a community: neighbours moving away, peers passing away, or mobility becoming so limited that going to the market or the mosque is no longer possible.

The quiet signs of loneliness

Older people rarely put loneliness into words directly. Behind the sentence "I'm fine, you get on with your own lives" there may be very different feelings. The following signs deserve attention:

• Phone calls becoming shorter or, on the contrary, the person not wanting to end them
• Giving up cooking, skipping meals, getting by on ready-made food
• A marked decline in the upkeep of the home and in personal care
• Withdrawing from visits, conversations and religious gatherings they used to enjoy
• Disrupted sleep, lying in bed for long periods during the day
• Frequent physical complaints and visits to the doctor
• Sentences such as "Who am I going to be a burden on?" or "What use am I any more?"

Loneliness and depression

Long-lasting loneliness is an important risk factor for depression in later life. In older people, depression does not always look like sadness; it can appear as listlessness, tiredness, loss of appetite, forgetfulness or complaints of pain. That is why it is often dismissed as "just old age". We look at this topic in more detail in our article on depression in later life. We would like to stress that these signs do not on their own amount to a diagnosis, but they do deserve an assessment.

Loneliness is not about having nobody around; it is about feeling that nobody truly sees you.

Let us imagine a woman in her seventies who lost her husband a few years ago and now lives alone in her house in Çorum, while her children live in Ankara. In the mornings she goes down to the market, and in the afternoons she has tea with her neighbour; anyone looking from the outside would think she is doing perfectly well. But in the evenings she leaves the television on just so that the house is not silent, when she wakes at night she lies awake for hours, and in a home that nobody visits except during the religious holidays she feels "forgotten". This fictional example shows how big the gap can be between what is visible from the outside and what is lived on the inside.

Feelings on the family's side

This picture has another end too: the adult children living in Ankara, Istanbul or another city. For them, a mother or father living alone can be a constant source of worry and guilt. The question "If something happened to her, who would even know?" comes back to life every time the phone goes unanswered. We explore the experience of caring from a distance in our article on an ageing parent far away.

Practical Suggestions to Support Older People Living Alone in Çorum

For the older person themselves

• Give your day a framework. A time to get up, regular meals, a short walk, a visit or a set time for a phone call. A structured day reduces the feeling of emptiness.
• Make small but regular contacts. A couple of sentences with the local grocer, a cup of tea with a neighbour, a chat after Friday prayers... These small contacts are more protective than you might think.
• Keep the sense of being useful alive. Small tasks such as writing down recipes for your grandchildren, tending the garden or teaching a child in the neighbourhood to read help you feel valued.
• Do not hide your feelings. Telling your children that you feel lonely is not being a burden on them; it is the first step towards looking for a solution together.

For family members who live far away

• Make phone calls part of a routine. A short call at the same time every day gives more reassurance than long, irregular conversations.
• Change your questions. Rather than "Are you all right?", concrete questions such as "Who did you see today?" or "What did you have for lunch?" give a real picture of daily life.
• Build a local network. Stay in touch with one or two people who can drop in regularly, such as a neighbour, a relative or the neighbourhood headman (muhtar).
• Make decisions together. When moving in with you, care support or a care home comes up, make the older person a partner in the decision, not its object.

For institutions and the neighbourhood

The home care and social support services of the municipality and public bodies, and neighbourhood-level structures such as mosques and the muhtar's office, are natural points of contact for reaching older people who live alone. Regular visiting programmes and places where older people can come together are realistic ways of reducing loneliness.

When Should You Seek Professional Support?

Loneliness is not always a mental health problem; however, it is worth consulting a professional in the following situations:

• If listlessness, an inability to enjoy things and hopelessness last for more than two weeks
• If appetite and sleep have changed markedly, or there is weight loss
• If forgetfulness is increasing rapidly or confusion appears
• If the person has completely shut themselves away at home
• If remarks such as "I wish I were dead and it was all over" or "I don't want to be a burden on anyone" become more frequent

With symptoms such as forgetfulness and confusion, a medical assessment is needed first to rule out physical causes. If thoughts of self-harm or of ending one's life are being expressed, this is an emergency: call 112 (emergency services) and do not leave the person alone.

How Is Loneliness in Later Life Addressed in Therapy?

When working with loneliness in later life, the aim is to bring meaning and connection back into the person's life. In cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT), thoughts such as "Nobody needs me any more" or "I'm a burden" are gently examined and compared with the person's actual experiences. Through a method called behavioural activation, small activities that the person enjoys and finds meaningful are gradually brought back into daily life.

With older people who have lost a spouse, the unfinished aspects of grief are also talked through. Involving the family in the process can help, especially in enabling children who live far away to cope with their worry and guilt. If depressive symptoms are pronounced, an assessment by a psychiatrist is recommended to decide whether medication is needed; psychotherapy and medical follow-up can run side by side.

For people with limited mobility or whose families live in another city, sessions can take place face to face or online. In depression and mood work carried out face to face in Çorum and online, it is possible to work not only with older people themselves but also with the adult children who care for them.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why are there so many older people living alone in Çorum?

There is no single study that explains this on its own. The data point to young people moving out of the province, older people's tendency to stay in the province where they were born, low fertility, the loss of a spouse and the limited availability of institutional care as possible factors.

Is living alone always harmful for older people?

No. Many older people who like their own routine, have strong social ties and are in good health are happy living alone. The risk increases when living alone is combined with social disconnection, inactivity and hopelessness.

As someone living far away, how can I tell whether my older parent is lonely?

Look at everyday details rather than the short answers given on the phone: what they are eating, whom they are seeing, how they are sleeping, whether they leave the house. The observations of a neighbour or relative nearby are also an important source of information.

Do I have to persuade an older relative to go to therapy?

Pressure often backfires. Responding with understanding to the reservation "Seeing a psychologist isn't for me" and presenting the session as "a chance to talk things over" can make the first step easier. If the person does not want to go, you can start by seeking support for your own worries.

• #loneliness in later life
• #single-person households
• #caring for older relatives
• #Çorum

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Eda Erkan Alapala

Klinik Psikolog. İstanbul Kent Üniversitesi Klinik Psikoloji Tezli Yüksek Lisans mezunu; bilişsel davranışçı terapi, çocuk merkezli oyun terapisi ve çocuk-ergen psikoterapisi alanlarında eğitimlerini tamamlamıştır.

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