2.1. Community characteristics
The unifying features of deaf communities are the mediums and settings of communication, i.e. the usage of sign language, and interaction in Deaf schools and Deaf associations. Since the majority of deaf children are born to hearing parents, Deaf individuals remain isolated in an urban context without an institutional convention platform such as Deaf schools or Deaf organizations. Thus, we can trace the formation of the present day Deaf community in Turkey to the opening of deaf schools (earliest 1889 [Socio-Historical Background - 1]), and to the Deaf organisations, the first of which was established in 1923 in İstanbul.
Other than the TİD community that is widespread across Turkey, to our knowledge there are two rural village sign language communities which have their own sign languages. The two sign languages were born through generations as a result of the high density of Deaf population in a small area due to hereditary deafness. One of them is Central Taurus Sign Language (CTSL), which is currently used in a village in the province of Mersin in the eastern Mediterranean (southern part of Turkey) and the other is Mardin Sign Language which is used in a town in southeastern Turkey. These languages are different from TİD. While CTSL still exists today with 30 deaf members, Mardin Sign Language is about to be extinct due to the migration of the young deaf members of the community to urban areas.