Turk (term for Muslims)

The ethnonymTurks was used as a synonym for some non-Turk Muslims in the Ottoman Empire. It was commonly used by the non-Muslim European and Balkan peoples to denote almost all Muslim people in the region, regardless of their ethnic background, stemming from the Ottoman Empire. Islam was the official state religion, with Muslims holding higher rights than non-Muslims. As such many non-Turk people converted to Islam for practical reasons during Ottoman rule and became a Turk. Apart from the ethnonym "Turks", the derivative Poturica ("Turkified") was used (maybe as a deragotary term) in South Slavic languages.