Ten thousands of Armenian women, girls and children were kidnapped, forced to convert to Islam and forced to marriage during the 1915 Genocide. Many Turks reveal that one of their ancestors was an Armenian, French journalists Ariane Bonzon writes in Slate.fr.

Existence of those ‘hidden Armenians’ is a state secret. According to a historian Ara Sarafian, around 100,000-200,000 Armenians escaped from death or deportations running to desserts during the year. Some of them were hidden by ‘kind’ Turks, some were kidnapped or forced to marriage.

The French journalist decided to shot a video on hidden Armenians. However, she was not encouraged. It seemed to be almost impossible to find those people. Anyway, the journalist managed to shot her video, where those Armenians did not differ at all from others. She brought an example of an Armenian from a village, who, revealing his real identity, moved to Istanbul, to convert to Christianity again. But he feared for his family who still lived in a village in Anatolia.

According to a Turkish lawyer of Armenian origin Luiz Bakar, the quantity of re-converters is increasing. He encourages that those hidden ones again became Christians, and expressed their identity and religion openly in Turkey.