Ethnic and Religious Mosaic of the Region

North Africa and the Middle East are ethnically and linguistically far more diverse than a common shorthand description as "the Arab world" suggests. Arabic is the majority language across most of North Africa and the Arabian Peninsula, the Levant, and Iraq, but major non-Arab populations include Persian speakers concentrated in Iran, Turkish speakers in Turkey, and the Kurds, an Iranic-language-speaking people numbering an estimated 30 to 45 million spread across contiguous territory in Turkey, Iraq, Iran, and Syria, making them frequently described as the largest ethnic group in the world without an internationally recognized state of their own. In North Africa, the indigenous Amazigh, or Berber, population predates the Arab conquest and remains numerically and culturally significant in Morocco and Algeria in particular, with Tamazight recognized as an official language alongside Arabic in Morocco's 2011 constitution and in Algeria's 2016 constitutional amendment.