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.Ethnically Arab Chileans are often called "Turks", (Spanish: Turcos) a term believed to 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.