Iraqis (Arabic: العراقيون al-ʿIrāqiyyūn; Kurdish: عراقیان Êrāqīyan) are the citizens and nationals of the Republic of Iraq.

The territory of modern-day Iraq largely overlaps with what was historically known as Mesopotamia, which was home to many noteworthy civilizations, such as Sumer, Akkad, Assyria, and Babylonia.

The fall of these native Mesopotamian civilizations, particularly Babylon in the 6th century BC, marked the beginning of centuries-long foreign conquests and rule.

[28] Recent studies indicate that the various Iraqi ethnic groups have significant genetic similarities, likely due to the long history of intermingling and assimilation between foreign and indigenous populations in the region.

[35] Iraq remained an important centre of civilization for millennia, up until the Muslim conquest of Mesopotamia and subsequently Abbasid Caliphate (of which Baghdad was the capital), which was the most advanced empire of the medieval world (see Islamic Golden Age).

[38] In spite of the importance of this region, genetic studies on the Iraqi people are limited and generally restricted to analysis of classical markers due to Iraq's modern political instability,[38] although there have been several published studies displaying a genealogical connection between all Iraqi peoples and the neighboring countries, across religious, ethnic and linguistic barriers.

[38] The Eurasian haplogroups R1b and R1a represent the second most frequent component of the Iraqi Y-chromosome gene pool, the latter suggests that the population movements from Central Asia into modern Iran also influenced Iraq.

The Iraqi-Assyrian population was found to be significantly related to other Iraqis, especially Mesopotamian Arabs,[41][37] likely due to the assimilation of indigenous Assyrians with other people groups who occupied and settled Mesopotamia after the fall of the Neo-Babylonian Empire.

[43] Studies have reported that most Irish and Britons have ancestry to Neolithic farmers who left ancient Mesopotamia over 10,000 years ago.

Genetic researchers say they have found compelling evidence that, on average, four out of five (80%) Europeans can trace their Y chromosome to the ancient Near East.

They compared the genetic signatures to those of modern populations and found similarities with the DNA of people living in today's Turkey and Iraq.

From 1949 to 1951, 104,000 Jews were evacuated from Iraq in Operations Ezra and Nechemia (named after the Jewish leaders who took their people back to Jerusalem from exile in Babylonia beginning in 597 B.C.E.

[54][55][56] The Iraqi diaspora is not a sudden exodus but one that has grown rapidly through the 20th century as each generation faced some form of radical transition or political conflict.