What are the key ethnic groups in the Middle East?

Answer 1

There are several major ethnic groups in the Middle East:

1) Settled Muslim Arabs: These are people who speak an Arabic language and practice Islam as their religion (or are Atheists who have a Settled Arab Muslim background). There are roughly 250 million Settled Muslim Arabs in the Middle East.

2) Türks: These are people who form the dominant population in Turkey and other Türkic peoples like the Iraqi Turcomans, the Iranian Azerbaijanis, and the Qashqai. There are roughly 70 million Türks in the Middle East.

3) Persians: This refers to people who speak Persian or a related language like Tajik or Dari. There are also similar groups to Persians like the Lurs. There are roughly 55 million Persians and similar groups in the Middle East.

4) Kurds: This refers to people who lie at the borders of Iran, Turkey, Iraq, and Syria and speak a Kurdish language like Kurmanji, Sorani, Zaza, or Galaki. There are roughly 35 million Kurds in the Middle East

5) Middle Eastern Christians: This refers to numerous small Christian groups throughout the Middle East, such as the Copts, the Maronites, the Melkites, the Greek Orthodox, the Assyrians, the Syriac Christians, and others. These peoples generally speak Arabic, but do not consider themselves as Arabs, rather belonging to the Pre-Arab peoples like the Ancient Egyptians or Arameans who previously lived in the region. In 2011, there were roughly 14 million Christians in the Middle East, but these numbers have dropped precipitously as these groups have faced persecution.

5) Bedouins: This refers to the nomadic desert-Arabs that populate the Middle East (in contrast to the Settled Arab Muslims above). Bedouins make up roughly 7 million people in the Middle East.

6) Jews: This refers to the dominant ethno-religious group in the State of Israel, who either practice the religion of Judaism or have the Jewish ethnicity. There are roughly 6 million Jews in the Middle East and almost all of them live in Israel.

7) Endemic Minorities: There are a number of smaller groups that are very different from the surrounding population, either by religion or by ethnic tradition, but are endemic to the Middle East, that fall into a grab-bag of sorts. This includes Circassians, Yezidis, Yarsanis, Shabakis, Sabians, Druze, Alawites, etc. These groups combined probably make up roughly 10 million people.

8) Immigrant Populations: There is a large immigrant worker population in the Gulf States that comes from a number of Asian countries like India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and the Philippines.

Answer 2

The three major ethnic groups, Turks, Arabs and Persians