Arabs in Turkey

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In 1995 Turkey's ethnic Arab population was estimated at 800,000 to 1 million, according to the US Library of Congress Country Study. The Arabs are heavily concentrated in big cities such as İstanbul, Ankara and along the Syrian border, especially in Hatay Province, which France, having at that time had mandatory power in Syria, ceded to Turkey according to the election polls in 1939. Arabs then constituted about two-thirds of the population of Hatay (known to the Arabs as Alexandretta or الإسكندرون al-Skanderûn), and the province has remained predominantly Arab. Arabs in Turkey are mostly Alevi Muslims, and most have family ties with the ʿAlawis living in Syria (see Alawis in Turkey). As Alevis, the Arabs of Turkey believe they are subjected to state-condoned discrimination. Fear of persecution actually prompted several thousand Arab Alevis to seek refuge in Syria following Hatay's incorporation into Turkey. The kinship relations established as a result of the 1939-40 emigration have been continually reinforced by marriages and the practice of sending Arab youths from Hatay to colleges in Syria. Since the mid-1960s, the Syrian government has tended to encourage educated Alevi to resettle in Syria, especially if they seem likely to join the ruling Baath Party.

There are also Arabs living along the border with Syria in the cities such as Gaziantep, Şanlıurfa, Mardin and Siirt. The Arabs in this part of the border consist of many Bedouin tribes placed there during the Ottoman Empire. Many of these tribes have blood ties to other Bedouins living in Syria, especially in the city of Ar Raqqah. However, Arabs in Turkey are mostly assimilated and view themselves as Turkish.^{[citation needed]}

The "Arabs" living in Urfa, Mardin, Diyarbak'r and other places in the "Haran ova" (the flat plain of Haran) are in majority, not the descendants of bedouin Arabs. They are most likely arabized "proto-Semites". Although the Bedouins also , small in numbers, have been there for thousands of years. The "sunni Arabs together with the Syriacs in the "plain of Haran" are most likely the original natives of the area. The Haran plain, is the birth place of Abraham.