After centuries of governing the region -- first as proxies for the Ottoman Turks , then under the British Empire and Saddam Hussein -- many Sunni Arabs have been unable to accept either the demographic facts on the ground -LRB- they make up only 20 percent of Iraq 's 28 million people -RRB- or the new political order -LRB- their minority status consigns them to rule by the majority Shiites in a democratic state -RRB- .