Arab Chileans are immigrants to Chile from the Arab world. Most are Christian and are the descendants of economic migrants from Palestine, Syria, and Lebanon, who arrived in Chile in the mid-19th to early-20th centuries. Christians in the Middle East are ethnic groups, mainly Arabs, with other ethnic groups like an Aramean minority in the Levant and Iraq, Armenian refugees in the Levant and Copts in Egypt. Ethnically Arab Chileans are often called "Turks", (Spanish: Turcos) a term derive from the fact that they arrived from the Ottoman Turkish Empire. Most arrived as members of the Eastern Orthodox church, but a minority became Roman Catholic. A minority are Muslim.