Crypto Armenians
Crypto-Armenians ( Armenian ծպտյալ հայեր , Turkish Kripto Ermeniler ) are Armenians in Turkey who converted to Islam in order to avoid the genocide of the Armenians in the Ottoman Empire in 1915. They continued their existence as Armenians in secret. Amy Singer, Christoph K. Neumann and Selçuk Akşin Somel estimate their number at 100,000 people.
Since Turkey became more liberal from the military coup in 1960 , some crypto-Armenians converted back to Christianity and changed their names to typically Armenian.
history
During the Armenian genocide , many Armenians were orphans received by local Muslim families, who changed the name of the children and to Islam convert left. When aid organizations and surviving Armenians looked for the orphans after the First World War and asked for them back, only a few were found and reunited with their families, while the rest mostly continued to live as Muslims. In addition, some families converted to Islam to avoid genocide.
Because of this, there are an unknown number of people of Armenian origin in Turkey today who are unaware of their ancestry.
Others, on the other hand, doubt the high number of "secret Armenians" of Armenian ethnicity , as this will change over time through Turkishization and marrying ethnic Turkish and Kurdish people, the boundaries of "Armenianism" are becoming blurred and many consider themselves more Turks than Turks today Armenians.
Return to Christianity
Since the 1960s, after the Conservative government of Prime Minister Adnan Menderes was overthrown by a military coup in 1960 and the liberal-democratic constitution of 1961 was adopted, there have been some examples of Islamized Armenian families converting back to Christianity and reassuming Armenian names.
number
Secret or crypto Armenians
| number | source |
| 30,000-40,000 | Tessa Hofmann |
| 60,000-300,000 | Erhan Başyurt , Turkish journalist |
| 80,000 | Mesrob II , the Patriarch of Constantinople , in the weekly magazine Der Spiegel |
Islamized and Turkish Armenians
- Note: The following numbers do not include the Hemşinli , who are often considered to be Islamized Armenians.
| number | source |
| 300,000 | Hrant Dink |
| 500,000 | Yusuf Halaçoğlu |
| 1,000,000-2,000,000 | Aztag , Armenian daily newspaper in Lebanon |
See also
Individual evidence
- ↑ Amy Singer, Christoph Neumann, Selcuk Aksin Somel: Untold Histories of the Middle East: Recovering Voices from the 19th and 20th centuries. Routledge, 2011. p. 41
- ↑ a b Conference on Islamized Armenians . Hrant Dink Foundation. September 26, 2013. Retrieved October 4, 2013
- ↑ Turkey's Secret Armenians ( Memento of the original from March 13, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . Al monitor. February 16, 2013. Retrieved October 3, 2013
- ↑ Armenians claim roots in Diyarbakır Hürriyet Daily News
- ↑ Armenian Աղթամարի պատարագը նպաստեց ծպտյալ հայերի ինքնության ինքնության ( The Aghtamar mass helped to restore the identity of crypto-Armenians ) ( Memento of the original from November 11, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ Turkish Ermeni kimliğine dönenler artıyor ( The return to Armenian identity increases )
- ↑ Tessa Hofmann: Armenians in Turkey Today (PDF; 357 kB)
- ↑ Turkish Erhan Başyurt, Ermeni Evlatlıklar. Saklı Kalmış Hayatlar [Armenian Foster Children: Hidden Lives] , İstanbul, Karakulu, 2006, p. 10
- ↑ German Armenian Patriarch in Turkey: "The Armenians are alone again"
- ↑ Sefa Kaplan: Son yıllarda bu kadar müspet tepki almadım (Turkish) . In: Hürriyet , September 30, 2005. Retrieved August 28, 2008. "Anadolu'da anneanneniz gibi 300 bin kadın bulunduğu söyleniyor."
- ↑ Başyurt, 2005. Hrant Dink: "300 bin rakamının abartılı olduğunu düşünmüyorum. Bence daha da fazladır."
- ↑ Turkish “500 BİN KRİPTO ERMENİ VAR”
- ↑ Armenian «ԻՍԼԱՄԱՑՈՒԱԾ ԵՒ ԳԱՂՏՆԻ ՀԱՅԵՐԸ ՄԻԱՏԱՐՐ ՉԵՆ», ԸՍՏ ԵՐՈՒԱՆԴ ՄԱՆՈՒԿԻ Ervand Manuk: The Islamized Armenians are not homogeneous Aztag Daily
