Many of the minorities (including the Albanians, Bosnians, Crimean Tatars, and various peoples from the Caucasus, as well as some of the Turks themselves) are descendants of Muslims ("muhajirs") who were expelled from the lands lost by the shrinking Ottoman Empire, but they have assimilated into and intermarried with the majority Turkish population and have adopted the Turkish language and way of life, though this does not make them ethnic Turks.