YEREVAN. – The matter of Islamized Armenians in Turkey has become a serious political problem for the society, analyst Haykazun Alvrtsyan stated at a press conference on Saturday.  

In Alvrtsyan’s words, there are several views in Turkey with respect to this matter: those of the country’s authorities, the nationalists, and the intelligentsia—which calls for the clarification of this issue.     

The analyst also noted that the Islamized Armenians in Turkey comprise two large groups. One group has reconciled with the present and does not want to remember the past. And the other group is called crypto-Armenians—that is, hidden Armenians—, and the latter want to speak openly about their national identity.

The speaker added that some things are already known about the crypto- and Islamized Armenians.

“Quite a lot of research is done, and some information is already available to us. According to these data, we have about four million Islamized Armenians [in Turkey]; one and a half to two million of them are crypto-Armenians; this cannot be too far from the truth,” Haykazun Alvrtsyan concluded.