Turkey’s Arabs are in need of support for preserving their cultural identity, Shukri Kirboga, president of an Arab-Turkish cultural association, told Arab News.
“Many of these residents know nothing of their original language,” he said. “Saudi Arabia is a prominent Islamic country that can play a big role in helping Arab minorities in several societies reconnect with their native mother tongue.”
“This is precisely why I chose to visit the Kingdom,” he said. “I came to appeal to Saudi leaders to provide support to the Arab community living in Turkey.”
There are more than 7 million Arabs living across 12 cities in Turkey, said Kirboga. “These communities, unfortunately, have no cultural support from Arab countries.”
Five million of these Arabs have supported more than 1 million Syrian refugees through providing humanitarian aid, while several Arab-Turkish tribes support the Free Syrian Army, he said.
Similarly, many Arab-Turks have strong ties with Arab tribes living in the northern regions of Syria.
Turkish Arabs, predominantly Muslim, mostly live along the southeastern border with Syria and Iraq in the Urfa, Batman, Bitlis, Gaziantep, Hatay, Mardin and Adana provinces of Turkey. In fact, most of Hatay’s residents are Arab.
Arabs on the eastern side of the border consist of Bedouin tribes, in addition to other Arabs who settled in the region before Turkic tribes — a collection of ethnic groups that live in central Asia, northwestern China and parts of eastern Europe — settled in Anatolia in the 11th century.
Arab society in Turkey is generally well-integrated into the Turkish population. Many still speak Arabic, in addition to Turkish.
“The current Turkish government allowed Arabic to be taught at Turkish schools and also allowed us to establish our association to preserve Arabian culture,” he said. “This government is unlike previous governments, which were anti-Arab and took action to take away our ethnic identity.”
One Turkish study estimates the Arab population to be anywhere between 1.1 percent and 2.4 percent of the total population, while an American estimate in 1995 pegged the figure at between 800,000 and 1 million residents.
A Turkish study conducted in 2006, however, concluded that less than one percent of the total population of Turkey is ethnically Arab.
Half a million Turkish residents spoke Arabic as a first language in 1992, according to another study.
By contrast, around 365,340 Turkish citizens, one percent of the total population in 1965, had Arabic as their mother tongue. In fact, more than half of this population could speak only Arabic at the time.