The Turkish-Germans are the largest ethnic minority group in Germany and also the largest Turkish community in the Turkish diaspora. The German census counts around three million Turks living in Germany. This does not only count those born in Turkey, but also descendants.
Turks (Turkish: Türkler), or Turkish people, are the largest Turkic ethnic group, comprising the majority of the population of Turkey and Northern Cyprus.
Iran and Turkey are not Arab countries and their primary languages are Farsi and Turkish respectively. Arab countries have a rich diversity of ethnic, linguistic, and religious communities. These include Kurds, Armenians, Berbers and others.
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How did Turks become Muslims?
Although not originally Muslims, the nomadic Turkic people converted to Islam after being conquered by the powerful Muslim Empire from modern-day Iran. As they rose within the ranks of the Muslim armies, the Turks eventually formed their own power base and began the Seljuk Empire.
In contrast to the United States, race is not an important category in Iran and there are no estimates of the country's racial composition. In practice, Iranians look similar to other people in the Middle East, and in the US, as per the US census bureau definition, they would be considered 'white.
Non-Muslims are not expected to follow Muslim religious practices. This means women, including foreign tourists, do not need to cover their hair. Tourists also do not need to observe fasting hours during Ramadan.
Is Turkey's recent spelling change about being more authentically Turkish? Or is there more to the story? In June 2022, the United Nations agreed to change the spelling of the country known in the English-speaking world as Turkey to Türkiye, heeding a request by the government of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
Although Turkey shares borders with Middle Eastern countries, it is not defined by them. It is more accurate to define Turkey as a Eurasian country – one that is economically, politically, and culturally tied to Europe. Popular cities, such as Istanbul and Bodrum, are far from conflict.
The economy of Turkey is an emerging free-market economy. It ranked as the 16th-largest in the world and 7th-largest in Europe by nominal GDP in 2025. It also ranked as the 12th-largest in the world and 5th-largest in Europe by PPP in 2025.
Turkish history extends back thousands of years before the founding of the Turkish Republic in 1923. Turks, originally a nomadic people from Central Asia, established several empires, including the Seljuk Empire and later the Ottoman Empire, which was founded in Anatolia by Turkish ruler Osman in 1299.
Early and medieval Turkic groups exhibited a wide range of both East Asian and West-Eurasian physical appearances and genetic origins, in part through long-term contact with neighboring peoples such as Iranic, Mongolic, Tocharian, Uralic and Yeniseian peoples.
The largest concentrations of Albanians outside Albania are in the bordering countries of Kosovo (where ethnic Albanians constitute a majority population), North Macedonia, and Montenegro. There are also Albanian communities in Greece, Italy, Turkey, Bulgaria, Serbia, and Romania.
Turks can be mixed and they can be white or brown. There are White Turks and then there are brown Turks, depends on their admixture and genetic background which is essentially what race is based on, not always about skin color. Many Turks from Turkey however usually do identify as being part of Caucasian group.
There are light-skinned, darker-skinned, and dark-skinned Palestinian Arabs, and light-skinned, darker-skinned, and dark-skinned Israeli Jews—and while Israelis and Palestinians can usually tell at a glance which of the two groups one of them belongs to, they do not do so on the basis of skin color.
The Azerbaijanis or Azeris are a Turkic ethnic group of mixed ethnic origins, primarily the indigenous peoples of eastern Transcaucasia, the Medians, an ancient Iranian people, and the Oghuz Turkic tribes that began migrating to Azerbaijan in the 11th century CE.
In the 2016 Iranian census, the remaining Jewish population of Iran was 9,826 As of 2021, only 8,500 Jews still live in Iran. After Israel, it is home to the second-largest Jewish population in the Middle East. Notable population centers include Tehran, Isfahan (1,200), and Shiraz.
Opinion polls bear out the decline of Islamic observance in Turkey during Erdogan's tenure in power. Between 2001 and 2018, the number of people who reported that religion played a “very important” part in their life declined from 80 to 60 percent. Fasting during the month of Ramadan has declined from 77 to 65 percent.
Turks did not eat pork even before Islamization. The most important reason for this was that pork was not a suitable animal for migration. It is possible to say that Turks could not get used to pork even after they settled down. However, after adopting Islam, they removed this meat from their menu.
Most Muslims in Turkey are Sunni Muslims forming about 85–90%, and Shia-Aleviler (Alevis, Alawites, and Ja'faris) denominations in total form up to 10% of the Muslim population. Among Shia Muslim presence in Turkey there is a small but considerable minority of Muslims with Ismaili heritage and affiliation.
Even if Cyprus sees itself as being an intrinsically European state, and is now a member of the European Union, it is nevertheless bound to the Middle East by virtue of history and geography. For thousands of years it has been inextricably tied to key developments taking place in the Near and Middle East.
The first human settlement on the Asian side, the Fikirtepe mound, is from the Copper Age period, with artifacts dating from 5500 to 3500 BCE, On the European side, near the point of the peninsula (Sarayburnu), there was a Thracian settlement during the early 1st millennium BCE.
Overall, Istanbul is considered a safe destination for travelers, offering a rich blend of history, culture, and modern conveniences. As in any large city, visitors should take basic precautions to ensure their safety.
