In 1915 and the following years , the Armenians living in their ancestral lands in the Ottoman Empire were systematically exterminated by the Young Turk government in the Armenian Genocide . The '' Ittihadists '' who perpetrated the genocide did not have the same understanding of race and nationality as the Nazis and nationality could be changed by religious conversion to Islam . Likewise , Protestant and Catholic Armenians could be exempted from deportation . Daniel Jonah Goldhagen explains that perpetrators differ in how they treat the targeted groups children : " In some instances , owing to the perpetrators ' social theory , they treat children of groups targeted because of ethnicity or nationality radically differently from their parents . The Turks conceiving of their existential enemies the Armenians not entirely coherently , an unstable agglomeration of a national/ethnic/religious-based hatred , nevertheless had a decidedly nonracist view of them . " He explains that the Turks adopted an formal policy of " leave the girls and children to be Islamized " . Although many children were killed , some were spared and allowed to live as Turks . Genocide historian Norman Naimark writes : " Thousands of Armenian children were raised as Muslims and Turks , while women and girls were routinely converted , taken into harems , and married to Turkish , Kurdish and Circassian husbands . In the period 1918-1922 , some of these women and children , encouraged by the Western powers and anti-Ittihadist Ottoman officials , reconnected with their Armenian families and communities . But women seventeen or over or those married to Muslims could choose to stay with their new families , and many did . Under the French occupation , many Armenian children were turned over by Turkish families to the Armenian community , but , wrote one Armenian officer , ' many of them want to go back ' " When relief workers and surviving Armenians started to search for and claim back these Armenian orphans after World War I , only a small percentage were found and reunited , while many others continued to live as Muslims . Additionally , there were cases of entire families converting to Islam to survive the genocide
Armenian Genocide
Armenian Genocide
Hidden Armenians