The topic of conversion and hidden Armenians is little known and at the same time reveals interesting details. It is a fact that during the genocide against Armenians, some Armenians converted to Islam in order to escape the massacres and deportations, and there are now Kurdized and Turkified Armenians in Western Armenia, some of whom only outwardly appear as such.  However, within the framework of the issue of hidden and Islamized Armenians, the fact that thousands of Arabized Armenians also live in Western Armenia is not known to many.

It is clear that various circles of the Turkish government, analysis and research centers are busy obtaining new data on hidden and Islamized Armenians.

The magazine “Axion” published data on the place of residence and number of crypto-Armenians currently living in Western Armenia, as well as data on which nation or religious community they are officially recognized as representatives of. Interestingly, according to the Turkish magazine, these data are constantly changing because studies are ongoing. However, Arabized Armenians have significant differences from other groups of Armenian converts living in Western Armenia, especially Kurdishized Armenians. For example, unlike Kurdishized Armenians, Arabized Armenians enjoy a certain level of trust from the Turkish government. This may help to understand the enigma of the presence of Arabized Armenians in Western Armenia.

Arabized Armenians consider themselves a step above Kurdishized Armenians because they are not against the Turkish government, on the contrary, the Turkish government supports them. Moreover, the Turkish government gives Arabized Armenians weapons, ammunition and even salaries so that they can fight against the Kurdish PKK and keep their villages. It is no secret that there has long been an undeclared war between Kurdish militants and the Turkish regular army. And in this war, Arabized Armenians are seen by the Turkish government as an additional bulwark against the Kurds.

In our opinion, the Arabization of Armenians and especially their living there can be interpreted and explained as follows:

1. During the Genocide, Armenians entered Arab tribes, became Arabs, became Muslims and continued to live in their villages as Muslim Arabs. The hypothesis has a certain degree of probability, but it also raises some questions, in particular, if the Ottoman or Turkish governments were aware of this, why did they allow it?

2. Armenians or their children who somehow reached Der Zor and Syria during the Genocide through deportation later converted to Islam and returned to their ancestral villages in Western Armenia as Arabs. Several circumstances speak in favor of this argument. First, in our surveys among Lebanese Armenians and Syrian Armenians, we learned that among the Armenians who sought refuge there after the genocide, there were some who returned to Turkey. The presence of orphaned Armenian children with some Arab tribes during the genocide years is attested by many sources. The 1921 decree of the Armenian Patriarchate of Istanbul lists the number of Armenian orphans in Arab tribes.

According to this list, there were at least 500 Armenian orphans from the Zibar, Egabar and Warakora tribes of the Der Zor region, 600 from the Jibur tribe, 700 from the Shamor (Shammar) tribe, 2,000 from the Anezai (Aneza) tribe, 2,000 from the Anezai (Aneza) tribe, and 2,000 from the Chechen tribes of the Rasoulain region. It cannot be ignored that these Armenian children and other surviving Armenians formed the nucleus of the Arabized Armenians. However, we believe that the return of Arabized Armenians to Western Armenia, especially in the late 1930s and early 40s, with the consent and support of the Turkish state, may shed light on all this. Armenians in Syria or Lebanon admit that some time after the genocide their relatives or friends returned to Western Armenia. The dates of this return usually coincide with the late 1930s. It is important to take into account the following fact: in 1938, as we mentioned, there were Kurdish revolts and uprisings in those regions and in Dersim, and the Alevi uprising was bloody. Before that, there were other uprisings and conflicts. In other words, the region has always been a place of unrest and the Turkish government created a counterbalance against the Kurds by bringing and settling Arabized Armenians there.

Of course, it is also interesting to know about the preservation or degree of Armenian self-awareness among Arabized Armenians, but the data on all this is contradictory and unclear. According to one version, if there was among them the idea of revenge for the genocide, they are unlikely to cooperate with the Turkish authorities. But on the other hand, here you can clearly see the traces of the centuries-old Turkish policy of winning and pitting ethnic groups against each other, that is, those who lived together. At the same time, the same idea of revenge can be seen in the struggle of the Arabized Armenians against the Kurds, because it is not a secret and even now the Kurds themselves admit that they acted against the Armenians during the genocide, massacring them, looting them, confiscating their property and villages. Perhaps the Turkish government used this very situation to draw Arabized Armenians into their ranks and use them against the Kurds.

The question of the relationship between Kurdishized and Arabized Armenians is extremely interesting and there is no data on it, but it can be noted that the two groups of converted Armenians in Western Armenia willingly or unwillingly fell into opposing camps.

As the facts clearly show, the issue of hidden Armenians has many sub-layers, each of which requires a different approach, and we believe that further studies will shed light on this problem, which for us has not only political but also moral and spiritual dimensions