An extensive literature shows religion as a key fault line in explaining the formation of political cleavages and party competition in the Middle East (Blaydes and Linzer 2012; Lust and Waldner 2016; Hinnebusch 2017; Wegner and Cavatorta 2018; Aydogan 2020). However, this literature largely overlooks religious parties that represent ethnic minority populations. This paper focuses on minority ethnoreligious parties operating in ethnocracies and poses several questions: What explains the increasing salience of ethnoreligious parties? How do the relations between ethnoreligious parties and governing actors shape opposition coalitions? How does increasing the political power of ethnoreligious parties affect minority empowerment? We address these questions by conducting a comparative study of Israel and Turkey. Although minority political activism in Israel and Turkey has been dominated by secular movements for decades, with the rise of ethnoreligious parties, the pro-Palestinian United Arab List (Ra’am) and the pro-Kurdish Free Cause Party (Hüda-Par), religion emerged as a salient source of ideological contestation among minority political entrepreneurs. The religious and secular factions of minority movements broadly differ in their relations with the Israeli and Turkish states. While the secular pro-Palestinian parties have been systematically excluded from government coalitions and decision-making bodies, recently Ra’am became the first independent Palestinian party in Israel to join a governing coalition composed of multiple Zionist parties in 2021. In the 2023 elections, the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) made an electoral alliance with Hüda-Par against the secular Kurdish nationalists. The Israeli and Turkish governments developed more accommodative relations with the Islamist factions of Palestinian and Kurdish politics while treating secular minority parties as “natural born enemies” and excluding them from political considerations. Based on a qualitative analysis of press releases and statements made by party leaders and government officials, this study attempts to examine the effects of ethnoreligious parties on ethnic power hierarchies and investigate how states’ accommodation of ethnoreligious parties shapes coalition politics among ethnic minority actors. The insights from this study will inform literatures on coalition building, ethnic conflict, and religious parties revealing the complex, fragmented relationship between religion and ethnicity. Keywords: Ethnic Conflict, Political Islam, Coalition Building, Political Parties, Comparative Perspective