While non-Muslim and non-Turkish groups are frequently referred to as minorities in the Ottoman context, this designation is ahistorical until the last decades of the Ottoman period. The process through which Armenians, Kurds, and others became minoritized only began in the second half of the 19th century for Armenians, and even later for the Kurds, although the ways in which both groups were constructed as minorities was interconnected. The consequences of the Armenians’ minoritization were extraordinarily violent and culminated in the Armenian Genocide. For the Kurds, who were tenuously included in the Muslims-as-majority construct that was also being articulated in the 19th century, the process was a bit more complicated. As Turkishness joined Muslimness as the majority identity Kurds were minoritized. The minoritization process resulted in the construction of first Armenians, then Kurds, as groups whose loyalty was suspect and whose citizenship was never equal to that of Turkish Muslims. Both groups came to be subjected to securitization practices, which continue to this day.