Editor

Altuğ Yılmaz

Language

Turkish

1st edition - July 2015
470 Pages
45 TL

The turn of the 20th century was a period of significant social and political transformation in the Ottoman geography. Some of these transformations included individual and collective acts of conversion, leading to a number of Armenians who (became) Islamized in different times and processes. Some of the Armenian children and teenagers survived the death marches and massacres of 1915 through adoption by Muslim families. Among the adults, we know that there were women who survived by marrying a Muslim or, in fewer cases, men; and in even more exceptional cases a whole family, neighborhood or village of Armenians survived by Islamization. Even though many of the Armenians –especially men– reunited with their families in upcoming years, many of them took Turkish, Kurdish or Arabic names and remained a “Muslim” for the rest of their lives, their stories were kept silent.

While until very recent times no narrative of history provided a place for the Armenians who survived by Islamizing, the last years saw an increase in the numbers of novels, life stories, witnessing and historical research that shed light on the issue.

The Conference on Islamized Armenians, which is organized by the Hrant Dink Foundation with the cooperation of Boğaziçi University History Department and MalatyaHAYDer was the first well-attended conference during which the matter was thoroughly tackled in its many dimensions. This book, which in addition to a detailed biography contains the final report based on the papers presented at the conference, the opening remarks and workshops held during the conference is a primary reference source on this subject. 

Many historians have said that in 1915 there were two hundred thousand Armenians which were Islamicized. Even if we believe that it's one hundred thousand, we know that there are three or four generations of people since then, so there are a few million people who live at present in Turkey who are of Armenian origin and have relatives. So this is a question which concerns millions of people in Turkey. We believe this conference will clear the way to shed light on what happened in 1915 and to debate and to come to terms with history as well as with our selves, to reckon this diversity in our culture, to put an end to discrimination and to enable us to live together once again peacefully.
Ayşe Gül Altınay, opening remarks

The footnote numbers in the article titled "The Assimilation of Armenian Exiles (1915-1917)" were deleted due to a technical error. To read the article with the numbering in the text, please click here.

Book name
Müslümanlaş(tırıl)mış Ermeniler
Sub heading
Konferans Tebliğleri
ISBN
9786056448898
Price
45 TL
Pages
470
Width
150 mm
Height
240 mm
Weight
630 gr
Edition
1st Edition - July 2015
Language
Turkish
Author
Collective
Editor
Altuğ Yılmaz
Translation
Altuğ Yılmaz, Gürol Koca, Alber Keşiş, Pakrat Estukyan, Nıvart Taşçı
Compilation
Altuğ Yılmaz, Bürkem Cevher, Duygu Coşkuntuna
Index
Murat Gözoğlu
Publication Coordinator
Emine Kolivar
Series design
Sarp Sözdinler, BEK
Design consultancy
BEK Tasarım ve Danışmanlık
Design application
Erge Yeksan
Printing
Mas Matbaacılık

This book contains the papers presented at the conference ‘Islamized Armenians' . The conference was realized by the Hrant Dink Foundation, as an initiative of MalatyaHAYDer in collabortaion with Boğaziçi University Department of History and supported by Olof Palme International Center, Friedrich Ebert Association and Chrest Foundation.

  • Opening 
    • Welcome Remarks
      Rakel Dink
    • Opening Remarks
      Gülay Barbarosoğlu
      Hosrof Köletavitoğlu
      Ayşe Gül Altınay
    • Opening Conversation
      Nebahat Akkoç, Sibel Asna, Fethiye Çetin
  • Part I: Burden of History, Politics of Naming
    • 100 Year Silence: Concepts, Classification and Expansion 
      Ayfer Bartu Candan (Moderator)
    • Researching and Conceptualizing Religious Conversion: Reflections on Ottoman and Republican History and Historiography
      Zeynep Türkyılmaz
    • Patriarch Shnork’s Four Categories of Anatolian Armenians and Today’s Muslim Armenians
      Avedis Hadjian
    • The Historical and Historiographical Silence on Islamized Armenians and New Memory Work
      Ayşe Gül Altınay
  • Part II: The Recent and Distant History of the Islamization
    • The Recent and Distant History of the Islamization
      Meltem Toksöz (Moderator)
    • Islamized Hemshin Armenians: Victims and Witnesses
      Sergey Vardanyan
    • Islamized Armenians: A Historical Approach to Hemshin and Its Environs
      Serap Demir
    • The Hemşinli Identity: Culture, Language and Religion
      Mahir Özkan
    • Conversion for Prosperity: Abduction, Marriage and Islamization in the Tanzimat Era
      Uğur Bahadır Bayraktar
    • Mass Conversion during the Hamidian Massacres 1894-1897 (1894-1897)
      Selim Deringil
  • Part III: Islamized in 1915: History and Bearing Witness I
    • Islamized in 1915
      Raymond H. Kévorkian (Moderator)
    • Assimilation and Forced Islamization as a Structural Element in the Conversion of the Armenians 
      Taner Akçam
    • An Untold Story of Survival: An “Islamized” Armenian Family in Marsovan, 1915-1919
      Armen Tsolag Marsoobian
    • Ruben Heryan: Liberation of Armenian Women and Children from Muslim Families after the Armenian Genocide
      Anna Aleksanyan
    • The Question of Arabized Armenians
      Gayane Çobanyan
  • Part IV: Islamized in 1915: History and Bearing Witness II
    • Islamized in 1915: History and Bearing 
      Ronald Grigor Suny (Moderator)
    • Mixed Marriage, Prostitution, Survival: Reintegrating Survivor Women into Post-Ottoman Armenian Communities
      Vahe Tachjian
    • Gender and Survival Options During the Armenian Genocide
      Arda Melkonian
    • Taken into Muslim Households: Experiences of Armenian Children during the Genocide
      Doris K. Melkonian
    • Islamization as an Instrument for Surviving and/or Disappearing
      Ishkhan Chiftjian
    • Assimilation of Armenian Deportees (1915-1917)
      Hilmar Kaiser
  • Part V: Traces of Memory: Music, Food and Stories 
    • To Leave or to Stay, Which is More Difficult? 
      Ferhunde Özbay (Moderator)
    • “Kurdish Music Cannot be Erased From Our Ears": Musical Memories of Sasun
      Armenians
      Wendy Hamelink ve Hanifi Barış
    • Only Lokum Remains: The Islamized Armenians in the Black Sea Region and the Resistance Story of a Flavour 
      Cafer Sarıkaya
    • A Story of Existence: What Remains from Sara…
      Nevin Yıldız Tahincioğlu
    • Muslim Armenians, a Paradox?
      Rubina Peroomian
  • Part VI: Memory, Ethnicity, Religion: Kurdish Identity
    • A Story of Fragmentation: Kurdish Identity, Armenian Identity and Genocide
      Yektan Türkyılmaz (Moderator)
    • Survival Strategies of the Islamized Armenian Families and Intergenerational Transmission: The Case of Pasûr (Kulp) 
      Adnan Çelik
    • The Perception of Armenians in the Modern Kurdish Novel and Representation of Collective Memory
      Davut Yeşilmen
    • A Facet of the Stories of Besni Armenian Orphans
      Ümit Kurt ve Murad Uçaner
  • Part VII: Memory, Ethnicity, Religion: Dersim
    • Dersim Armenians 
      Murat Yüksel (Moderator)
    • Dersim Armenians: The 1937-38 Dersim Massacre and the Monk's Family 
      Nezahat Gündoğan ve Kazım Gündoğan
    • The Armenian Population of the Dersim Cultural Basin, Alevized Armenians and the Armenian Factor in the Alevi Search for Identity 
      Hranuş Kharatyan
    • Protected but Discriminated: Dersim Armenians
      Gökçen Beyinli
  • Part VIII: Memory and Identity
    • Hidden Lives
      Arus Yumul (Moderator)
    • The Rivers of Memory: Exploring Collective Memory and Cultural Assumptions through the Voice of the Islamized Armenians 
      Helin Anahit
    • Reconstructing Identity: The Importance of Family Structure among Hidden and Islamized Armenians 
      Laurence Ritter
    • Displacement and the Production of Difference: Islamized Armenians and Imagined Geographies
      Anoush Tamar Suni
  • Workshop
    • Meeting of Children and Grandchildren of Islamized Armenians
      Jülide Aral
  • About the authors
  • Bibliography
  • Index