the H\u00fcrriyet Daily News<\/span><\/strong><\/a> last week.<\/p>\nT\u00fcrkay was 15 when he learned that his real surname is Ohanyan. His father was a pilgrim, and T\u00fcrkay grew up with Sunni\u2013Muslim culture. Muslim Armenians in the southeastern province of Diyarbak\u0131r recognize each other, he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe perception of Islam [in Diyarbak\u0131r] is very important,\u201d he said. \u201c[The people in Diyarbak\u0131r] can tolerate you up to a certain point when you say you are Armenian. Things change, however, when you touch upon Islam.\u201d<\/p>\n
T\u00fcrkay added that Christian Armenians look down upon Muslim Armenians.<\/p>\n
\u201c[They behave] as if we had a choice in the matter. The Armenian identity must bond around race, not religion. Religion can be chosen, but not race,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Yusuf Hala\u00e7o\u011flu, the former president of the Turkish Historical Society, or TTK, said the situation in Diyarbak\u0131r could be seen in other parts of the country. \u201cThere are hidden Armenians not just in Diyarbak\u0131r but all across Turkey, and now they are also revealing their identities,\u201d he told the Daily News over the phone. Hala\u00e7o\u011flu was removed from his post at the TTK following public response to his remarks claiming that Kurds living in Turkey were actually Turcomans and that Kurdish \u2013 Alevis were of Armenian descent.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy remarks were falsely conveyed to the public,\u201d Hala\u00e7o\u011flu said. \u201cI shared this information with the deceased Hrant Dink as well. I tried to highlight under which identities those Armenians who supposedly died in 1915 still continue to exist,\u201d he said, adding that he possessed records of Armenians who concealed their identities.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is information emanating from records [contained] in the United States archives. I have records [that indicate] the villages and locations they reside in, and the names of the clans they live under,\u201d said Hala\u00e7o\u011flu.<\/p>\n
\u0130smet \u015eahin, a Hem\u015fin researcher and politician, said that, despite a grain of truth in Hala\u00e7o\u011flu\u2019s comments, his remarks were intended to insult Armenians.<\/p>\n
Islamicized Armenians who live in the provinces of Artvin and Rize in Turkey\u2019s eastern Black Sea region define themselves as Hem\u015fins and speak a dialect of the Armenian language. Hamshenite Armenians still maintain their Christian traditions, even though they define themselves as Muslims, according to \u015eahin.<\/p>\n
His research indicated that a large portion of hidden Armenians in Turkey live under the Kurdish \u2013 Alevi identity, \u015eahin added.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe numbers of Armenians who changed their identities [can be found in Turkey\u2019s] state archives,\u201d he said over the phone. Turkey\u2019s state archives contain many documents about this subject \u2014 \u015eahin further noted and added that Hala\u00e7o\u011flu had access to this information as well.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere were elements of truism in [Hala\u00e7o\u011flu\u2019s] remarks, academically speaking,\u201d Kaz\u0131m G\u00fcndo\u011fan, a researcher and documentarian, told the Daily News in a phone interview, but \u201c[Hala\u00e7o\u011flu] treated this subject matter as political material.\u201d G\u00fcndo\u011fan\u2019s family lives under the Kurdish \u2013 Alevi identity in the southeastern province of Tunceli, formerly known as Dersim.<\/p>\n
\u201cDespite the fact that [covert Armenians in Tunceli] define themselves as Kurdish \u2013 Alevis, they have connections with the churches in Istanbul. They pray out in nature,\u201d added G\u00fcnd\u00fcz who said he conducted his research by appealing to witnesses.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u201cRace, identity and religion are distinct affairs. I\u2019ve been raised as a Sunni-Muslim, and live as one, but I deny neither my past nor my culture…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":108969,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tstyn_error":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[20373,28800,11772,26583,26584,26585,26582,28801,15836,23435],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108974"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=108974"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108974\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/108969"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=108974"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=108974"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=108974"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}