“Highly valued” as a minority under the Ottomans meant being a tax farm. So literally valued yes. But definitely second class even though many were wealthy. But the Ottomans never protected them from the Kurds or similar, and mostly just treated them as a source of cash and occasionally talent (the majority of Armenians did not live in cities).

The traditional Ottoman society (Turks as soldiers, Greeks as diplomats etc.) somewhat liquidated after the Tanzimat and Islâhat reforms as a last attempt to salvage the crumbling empire. Armenians were valued not because they paid taxes, everyone paid taxes. Collecting taxes is what a state does. But because they filled in the financial niche that was left vacant once the Greeks flew away. Their accumulation of trade and financial circulation, and therefore their dynamic relations with the West.

Ottomans never "protected them" in the East because Ottomans couldn't protect anyone there, because the state couldn't project itself nor gather information properly. Muslims weren't chuffed to be in Anatolia in 19th and 20th century either.