Many countries today face the challenges posed by their ethnic and religious diversity. This article comparatively analyzes how defining nation in Russia and Turkey affects what groups constitute religious minorities and what their prospects of integration into the Russian and Turkish societies are.It conceptualizes religious minorities as those religious groups that are excluded from the prevailing and institutionalized definitions of nation. This article studies what role religion, comprising Orthodox Christianity, and Sunni Islam, respectively, has played historically and until nowadays in Russia and Turkey in the definitions of their national identities and what kind of religious minorities each of these definitions created. It argues that a position of religious minorities depends not only on the informal association of national identity of the majority with certain religion, but also on the institutionalized support for the dominant religion by the ruling political forces.

The absence of a universally accepted definition of minority and standardized mechanisms for minority protection presents challenges during the European Union (EU) accession process. The differences between definitions used by European policy makers and those used in candidate countries are evident in Turkey's journey to the EU. Cultural identity boundaries are dynamic, and emphasizing the protection of particular minority groups can be regarded as a minority-forging policy that places at risk the successful implementation of minority protection in the candidate country.