Arabs in Turkey
ethnic group
Arabs in Turkey (Turkish: Türkiye Arapları; Arabic: عرب تركيا) are about 1.5 million or 5 million (including the Syrian refugees) citizens or residents of Turkey who are ethnically of Arab descent. They are the third-largest minority in the country after the Kurds and the Circassians and are concentrated in a few provinces in Southeastern Anatolia. In addition to the native group, millions of Arab Syrian refugees have sought refuge in Turkey since the beginning of the Syrian civil war in 2011.
Background
Besides the large communities of both foreign and Turkish Arabs in Istanbul and other large cities, most live in the south and southeast.
Turkish Arabs are mostly Muslims living along the southeastern border with Syria and Iraq but also in Mediterranean coastal regions in the following provinces: Batman, Bitlis, Gaziantep, Hatay, Mardin, Muş, Siirt, Şırnak, Şanlıurfa, Mersin and Adana. Many tribes, in addition to other Arabs who settled there, arrived before Turkic tribes came to Anatolia from Central Asia in the 11th century. Many of these Arabs have ties to Arabs in Syria and Saudi Arabia, especially in the city of Raqqa. Arab society in Turkey has been subject to Turkification, yet a good number of them speak Arabic in addition to Turkish. The Treaty of Lausanne ceded to Turkey large areas that had been part of Ottoman Syria, especially in Aleppo Vilayet.
Besides a significant Shafi'i Sunni population, about 300,000 to 350,000 are Alawites (distinct from Alevism).
The public source identifies “Arabs in Turkey” as ethnic group. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Arabs, Turkey and ethnic.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 16, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q623773. The first chronological checks are 2011.
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This entry incorporates text from “Arabs in Turkey” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.