Demographics of Egypt of Egypt. There are also sizable minorities of Beja and Dom. The country was host to many different communities during the colonial period, including Greeks, Italians, Lebanese, Syro-Lebanese, Jews, Armenians, Turks and Albanians, though most either left or were compelled to leave after political developments in the 1950s. The country still hosts some 90,000 refugees and asylum seekers, mostly Palestinians and Sudanese. Other sources give more detailed statistics, including the Beja (ca. 1 million), the Nubians (ca. 300,000 in 1996), Dom (ca. 230,000 in 1996), Berbers (Siwis) (ca. 5,000). Arabic is the official language of Egypt, with the vast majority
Turks in Egypt Turkish descendants in Egypt. This is because Egypt's official censuses do not allow its citizens to declare their ethnic origin, language, or religion. An estimate from 1971 suggested that the population of Cretan Turks alone numbered 100,000 in Egypt. According to an article by Gamal Nkrumah in the Egyptian Al-Ahram Weekly, estimates regarding the population of the Turkish minority vary considerably, ranging from 100,000 to 1,500,000. In 1993 the Turkish scholar Prof. Dr. Metin Akar claimed that there was 1.5 million Turks living in Egypt. Some Turkish scholars have suggested considerably higher estimates. For example, in 2016, the Turkish journalist