Crypto-Armenians
Crypto Armenians (Armenian ծպտյալ հայեր, Turkish Kripto Ermeniler ) are Armenians in Turkey who were forced to convert to Islam in order to escape the Deportation Act and the subsequent genocide of the Armenians in the then Ottoman Empire in 1915.
The term was introduced by the Armenian Patriarchate of Constantinople Opel, which distinguished them from the türkisierten or Kurdish ized Armenians. According to this concept, they can be distinguished despite their possible Muslim faith affiliation of the so-called Islamized Armenians, which were assimilated by the Turkish people against the genocide. Since the Turkish government became more liberal from the military coup in 1960, converted some crypto Armenians back to Christianity and changed their names to typical Armenian.
- 3.1 Secret or crypto Armenians
- 3.2 Islami Disseminated and Turkicised Armenians
Etymology
During his meeting with the Armenian community in Jerusalem In 1980, Chenork Kaloustian, the Armenian Patriarch of Constantinople Opel, four major groups of living in Turkey Armenians before:
History
During the Armenian Genocide many Armenian orphans were taken by local Muslim families, which changed the names of the children and let them convert to Islam. As aid agencies and surviving Armenians after World War investigated the orphans and they demanded back, only a few have been found and reunited with her family, while most Muslims lived on. In addition, some families converted to Islam in order to escape the genocide.
As a result, there are an unknown number of people of Armenian descent in modern day Turkey, who are not aware of their ancestry.
Others doubt the high number of "hidden Armenians " Armenian ethnicity, as this change by Turkification and through marriages with ethnic Turkish and Kurdish people with the time limits of the " Armeniertums " blurred and many consider themselves today more than Turks than as Armenians.
Return to Christianity
Since the 1960s, having overthrown the conservative- authoritarian government of Prime Minister Adnan Menderes by a military coup in 1960 and the liberal- democratic constitution was adopted in 1961, there are some examples of Islamized Armenian families who convert back again to Christianity and re- adopted Armenian name.
Number
Secret or crypto Armenians
Islami Disseminated and Turkicised Armenians
Distribution
The following table shows the number of crypto- Armenian families in central and eastern Anatolia, according to the study by the Turkish historian Dr. Salim Cöhce, professor at the İnönü University in Malatya, which was published in the weekly Aksiyon: