Millet Ethnicity
This chapter examines how increasing media reports of some Turkish Muslims coming to terms with their Armenian ancestry is challenging traditional notions of Armenian identity that maintained a synonymy of Armenian-ness with Christianity, specifically that of the Armenian Apostolic Church. Using the concept of "millet ethnicity"--the ethnicization of religious identities--the author argues that the ethnic gulf that separates the Armenian Christians from the Turkish Muslims remains a potent legacy of the millet system in the Republic of Turkey. However, two groups within Turkey blur the boundaries: the Hopa Hemshin (Armenian-speaking Muslims from Eastern Turkey) and the "Islamized" Armenians. This chapter therefore details the debate regarding the Armenian-ness of the Hopa Hemshin and Islamized Armenians, coupled with the enthusiastic engagement by the Diaspora with these two groups, in order to demonstrate how modern conceptions of what it is to be an Armenian are changing.