This chapter examines the long-term repercussions of religion state power-arrangements based on sacred syntheses of the religious and the national. It argues that religion state power arrangements contribute to the production of citizenship regimes that range from state-sponsored exclusion based on religious categories to an official “politics of recognition”. The chapter shows that as the sacred synthesis between religion and the state solidified, state elites increasingly turned to religious discrimination and exclusionary religious nationalism to further consolidate, control and define the boundaries of citizenship. This chapter also analyzes some of the contemporary conflicts—namely struggles over (religious) civil rights and pluralism as well the debates about official Islam Turkey—that have taken root as a result of sacred syntheses between the pious and national. By contrasting citizenship policies in Greece in Turkey with those in Egypt and elsewhere, the chapter shows that the different citizenship regimes to have emerged in former Ottoman nations have posed impediments to the development of liberal democracy in unique ways.