and they mostly live in provinces near the Syrian border, particularly the Hatay region, where they made up two fifths of the population in 1936. However, including recent Syrian refugees, they make up to 5.3% of the population. Most of them are Sunni Muslims. However, there is a small group of Alawis, and another one of Arab Christians (mostly in Hatay Province) in communion with the Antiochian Orthodox Church. Turkey experienced a large influx of Iraqis between the years of 1988 and 1991 due to both the Iran–Iraq War and the first Gulf war, with around 50,000 to 460,000 Iraqis entering the country. Syrians in Turkey include migrants from Syria to Turkey, as well as their descendants. The number of Syrians in Turkey is estimated at over 3.58 million people as of April 2018, and consists mainly of refugees of the Syrian Civil War. Armenians Armenians are indigenous to the Armenian Highlands which corresponds to the eastern half of modern-day Turkey, the Republic of Armenia, southern Georgia, western Azerbaijan, and northwestern Iran. Although in 1880 the word Armenia was banned from being used in the press, schoolbooks, and governmental establishments in Turkey and was subsequently replaced with words like eastern Anatolia or northern Kurdistan, Armenians had maintained much of their culture and heritage. The Armenian population of Turkey was greatly reduced following the Hamidian massacres and especially the Armenian genocide, when over one and half million Armenians, virtually the entire Armenian population of Anatolia, were massacred. Prior to the Genocide in 1914, the Armenian population of Turkey numbered at about 1,914,620. The Armenian community of the Ottoman Empire before the Armenian genocide had an estimated 2,300 churches and 700 schools (with 82,000 students). This figure excludes churches and schools belonging to the Protestant and Catholic Armenian parishes since only those churches and schools under the jurisdiction of the Istanbul Armenian Patriarchate and the Apostolic Church were counted. After the Armenian genocide however, it is estimated that 200,000 Armenians remained in Turkey. Today there are an estimated 40,000 to 70,000 Armenians in Turkey, not including the Hamshenis. Armenians under the Turkish Republican era were subjected to many policies which attempted to abolish Armenian cultural heritage such as the Turkification of last names, Islamification, geographical name changes, confiscation of properties, change of animal names, change of the names of Armenian historical figures (i.e. the name of the prominent Balyan family were concealed