[1] In Turkey, Hemshin people do not speak the Homshetsi dialect apart from the "Eastern Hamsheni" group living in provinces of Artvin and Sakarya and their mother tongue is now Turkish.

[15] For centuries, the ongoing migration from the geographically isolated highlands to lowlands made the Hemshin people settle in the areas near Trabzon, Artvin and in the Western part of the Black Sea coast.

A 2011 genetic survey based on the Y-chromosomal markers of the Hemshin indicated the central part of the historical Armenian highlands as a plausible place of origin for the Hamsheni population.

While escaping Arab persecutions, about 12,000 Armenians led by Prince Shapuh Amatuni and his son Hamam moved to Pontos, ruled by Byzantine Empire.

[18] Robert H. Hewsen shows the region where today's Hemşin is located to be populated by a people with different designations throughout the ancient and early medieval history.

Then, taking the Iranians, [Vashdean] crossed the Chorox river and went to Hamam's city, named Tambur, which he attacked with fire and sword and enslaved.

[28] Two other Armenian chronicles Ghewond and Stepanos Asoghik of Taron, report in short passages in their histories about a migration from Armenia/Oshakan led by prince Shapuh Amatuni and his son Hamam.

[28] Benninghaus specifies "Tambur" as the destination of the migration led by Hamam and his father Shapuh Amaduni and says that they have seemingly met people there who were already Christians, possibly Greeks.

[36] In his analysis of the literary and non-literary sources from the 8th through the 19th centuries, combined with excursions into Hamšēn during the 1980s to identify the surviving Armenian architecture, Dr. Robert W. Edwards has defined the geographical perimeters of that region and assessed the historical impact of its extreme isolation.

[37] Sources of the ruling powers in the region, (Byzantine, Trapezuntine, Georgian, Armenian and Turkish) are silent about Hemshin; until the conquest by the Ottomans.

[41][42] Most sources agree that prior to Ottoman era majority of the residents of Hemshin were Christian and members of the Armenian Apostolic Church.

Even though detailed information regarding the nature of these movements is missing, in summary: The present community of Hemshinli is exclusively Muslim and Turkish speaking.

Recent studies by Hovann Simonian (Author: The Hemshin: A Handbook (Caucasus World)) suggest that this language is an archaic dialect of Armenian subject to influence from Turkish and Laz.

[56] The "Turkey for the Turks" ideology, writes Neal Ascherson, "offered no security for minorities" with "the tiny Hemşinli group having especially compelling reasons to keep its head down" because "its members are the descendants of Armenians.

[59] The German scholars Wolfgang Feurstein and Tucha Berdsena describe Kırzıoğlu's methodology as so: At first Kırzıoğlu assaults the reader with a flow of historical peoples; he then searches for some kind of phonetic correspondence or similarity with an old Turkish tribe, flavors this alleged historical outpouring with a pinch of "Islam," and presents himself as a competent researcher of Turkishness.

In 2005, the first music album exclusively of anonymous Hamshen folk songs and sung mostly in Homshetsi, Vova - Hamşetsu Ğhağ was released.

Mesut Yılmaz, a former Prime Minister of Turkey, was born in Istanbul to a family with partial Hamsheni (Western group) origins.

[63] The community issued other important names in Turkish history and society such as Murat Karayalçın, a former Deputy Prime Minister and mayor of Ankara who is from Şenyuva (Çinçiva) village of Çamlıhemşin.

[62][64][65] There are two ongoing projects involving Turkish NGOs and EuropeAid, European Commission's external aid instrument, that touch their issues.

The more recently (2007) launched "Ecodialogue Project" has set itself as goal raising environment consciousness of the region's enterprises and improving the poor levels and quality of the information relayed by local guides,[66] many of whom are self-styled and unlicensed.

During the Mikhail Gorbachev period of the Soviet Union in the late 1980s, the Hamshenis of Kazakhstan began petitioning for the government to move them to the Armenian SSR.

However, this move was denied by Moscow because of fears that the Muslim Hamshenis might spark ethnic conflicts with their Christian Armenian brothers.

Since 2000, several hundred of the Muslim Hamshenis in Russia who have resettled from Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan to Krasnodar Krai (about 1000 total) have repeatedly attempted to formally receive registration from the local authorities.

In defiance of the authorities an organisation of their co-ethnics in Armenia have appealed to the Russian ambassador in Yerevan to get Moscow to intervene in this case and overrule the regional officials who seem intent on preventing Hamshenis from gaining a status of permanent residency.

Sochi has an ethnic Russian majority (~70%) but is home to a sizable Armenian minority (~20%), which is especially notable in the Adlersky City District where they compose more than half of the total population.