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Meskhetia is a mountainous, agricultural region of Georgia, located along the border with Turkey. The city of Akhaltsikhe serves as its main administrative center. The Ottoman Empire conquered Meskhetia in the 16th century. Turkish rule lasted more than two centuries until Russia occupied the region in 1829, during the reign of Nicholas I.Meskhetian Turks differ from other formerly deported people in that they have been uprooted not once, but twice since World War II. In addition to being dispatched into internal exile by communist dictator Joseph Stalin, the sizable Meskhetian Turk community in Uzbekistan was the victim of a pogrom in 1989. Both events weigh heavily on Meskhetian Turk thinking today, injecting a sense of urgency into repatriation efforts. Some Meskhetian Turk leaders worry that as long as the diaspora remains so dispersed and relatively disorganized, it will face a threat of persecution. Meskhetian Turk anxiety is heightened by the general economic insecurity in the former Soviet Union, in which fierce competition for jobs, housing and essential services can heighten interethnic tension.
The Deportation of 1944
The precise number of Meskhetian Turks who were forcibly removed from their homeland is difficult to pinpoint. Groups of people numbering between 85,000 and 120,000, the majority of them Meskhetian Turks, were forcibly uprooted from Georgia between November 15 and 17, 1944, and sent to Central Asia. In ensuing months, more than 30,000 people, mostly ethnic Georgians, were forcibly resettled in Meskhetia. The reasons for Stalin’s actions have never been fully explained.
In Central Asian exile, Meskhetian Turks lived under a so-called special regime, which restricted basic civil rights, including freedom of movement. The special regime was lifted with respect to Meskhetian Turks only in 1956 following the death of Stalin. Subsequent government decrees restored freedom of movement to Meskhetian Turks. Nevertheless, in practice they remained unable to return to their homeland because it had been designated a “border zone,” off limits to all outsiders. Special residency permits, unavailable to Meskhetian Turks, were required to enter the Meskhetia region. Attempts by Meskhetian Turks to return, even for the briefest of periods, were blocked by Soviet border guards.
The trauma inflicted on Meskhetian Turks by the deportation does not appear to have dissipated over time. Stories about the homeland, as well as the struggles connected with the deportation, continue to be passed down from the older to the younger generations, ensuring that the desire to rectify the injustice remains strong. As with other formerly deported peoples, the deportation experience is remembered with the intensity of emotion that prompts wizened old men to cry.
Yasin Khasanov is one such person. He was 15 years old in 1944, living with his mother in the mountainous village of Toba, about 10 miles from the regional capital of Akhaltsikhe. His father, having been drafted into the Soviet army, was away fighting the Germans. He recalled the deportation in the following way:
MVD [Interior Ministry] troops came to our village, and we were told that for the next three days no one in the village would be permitted to leave their homes. Then, one night, at 4 o’clock in the morning a foreman from our collective farm knocked on our door and told my mother that all adults in the village were to assemble immediately for an important meeting. The meeting lasted about 15 minutes. I saw people coming out and they were crying. I asked my mother and all that she would say was “they are sending us away.” The MVD troops gave us no explanation. They did not accuse us of anything. They merely said that anyone who disobeyed the order would be shot.… Conditions on the journey [into internal exile] were harsh. We were jammed into railroad cars. There were no proper sanitary facilities. It was so cold in the cars that our bread froze. The bodies of those who died en route were thrown out of the cars and onto the tracks.Akhmed Bairakhtov was 20 years old and a highly decorated soldier when the Meskhetian Turk deportation occurred. Far removed from his homeland, immersed in the bitter fight against the Nazis, he had no idea that friends and family had been forcibly removed to Central Asia. It was only in early 1945, when he was demobilized after being wounded for the fourth time, that he returned to his depopulated village and discovered what had happened to his people:I had been at the front fighting for the Soviet Union. I participated in the defense of Leningrad… When I returned to the village, I did not encounter anyone. I went to my family’s home and saw the family dog. It recognized me and was friendly. But it behaved in such a manner that I knew something bad had occurred, but I did not yet know what. So I sat down and shared some bread and sausage with the dog. Then I saw a woman, a Georgian. She told me that she had occupied my family’s home and went on to inform me about the deportation. Suddenly I noticed that I was crying, and I could see that she was crying too.… Along with a small group of demobilized Meskhetian Turk soldiers, I went to search for my family in Central Asia. We had no addresses, nothing. In December of 1945 [six months after the end of the war], I finally located my mother in Tashkent, Uzbekistan. She told me that my sister was living in Samarkand.… I remember conditions during the first year in Uzbekistan were dire. There was nothing to eat. People were forced to eat cattle fodder in order to survive.Meskhetian Turk tales of hardship and privation closely resemble those of other formerly deported peoples, including Crimean Tatars, Volga Germans, Chechens, and Ingush. Yet, Meskhetian Turks stand apart from most other World War II deportees because they were never collectively accused of a treasonous act.Allegations of collaboration with the enemy, which later proved to be specious, served as the basis for the deportation of the Tatars, Chechens, Ingush, and others. It was hardly a coincidence that many of the homelands of these formerly deported peoples had been either occupied, or were located close to the front. This fact enabled Stalin to make the unjustified accusations, effectively taking revenge against national groups whose allegiance to the Soviet system had been frail before the outbreak of the war.
Meskhetia, however, was located more than 100 miles from the deepest point of the German army’s advance into the Soviet heartland. Thus, Meskhetian Turks as a people were never in a position to be disloyal to the Soviet state. On the contrary, many indicators show that Meskhetian Turks remained loyal to the Soviet cause during the war. For example, over 44,000 Meskhetian Turks fought in the Red Army, with only 16,000 of them surviving the fight against the Nazis.
In the absence of facts, rumor and conjecture about the origins of the deportation decision have proliferated. One theory popular with many Meskhetian Turk adherents is that their deportation occurred because Stalin had plans to invade Turkey during closing stages of World War II. Arif Yusunov, an independent scholar based in Azerbaijan, believes that Meskhetian Turks were viewed by Kremlin planners in 1944 as a potential Fifth Column that could disrupt Soviet invasion plans. Such a perception prompted their forced removal as a preemptive measure, he says.
The Pogrom of 1989
Pogroms committed against Meskhetian Turks in the Central Asian republic of Uzbekistan in 1989 destroyed most of what the Meskhetian Turk diaspora had managed to rebuild following deportation.
Uzbekistan, specifically the fertile and populous Fergana Valley, had been the principal destination for Meskhetian Turk deportees. Despite the hardships associated with their internal exile, many Meskhetian Turks in Uzbekistan had attained a relative measure of prosperity, proving themselves industrious agricultural producers.
Former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev’s economic and political liberalization policies contributed greatly to the anti-Meskhetian Turk outburst, lifting the lid on simmering nationalist sentiment among Uzbeks. Overcrowded conditions in the Fergana Valley, combined with widespread poverty, also fueled interethnic hostility. By May 1989, the tension was such that a supposed misunderstanding between an Uzbek and a Meskhetian Turk in a Fergana market led to a fight, which sparked countrywide rioting that left about 100 people dead. The loss of life and property might have been much greater if the Soviet army had not been dispatched to protect and then oversee the enforced evacuation of many Meskhetian Turks.
Saifadin Tamaradze, a 54-year old farmer who now lives in the Sabirabad region of Azerbaijan, recalled that the swift pace of the Fergana events left evacuees thoroughly deflated:
As late as May 1, we had no reason to expect that there would be any problems. Then we began hearing rumors that something bad might happen.… After the incident [in the farmer’s market], Uzbek crowds appeared on the streets and they were throwing stones and threatening people. We tried as best we could to defend ourselves.… We became very afraid when we heard that in other places they [Uzbeks] were burning houses and killing people, so we fled to a collection point, where the Soviet military was protecting us.… We left in such a hurry that we had no time to collect any possessions. We didn’t even take our documents.… It was devastating to leave. With hard work people had built a nice life, and we had to leave with nothing.Many of the estimated 70,000-plus Meskhetian Turk evacuees from Uzbekistan settled in Azerbaijan. Others went to various regions of Russia, especially Krasnodar Krai. Still more resettled in neighboring Central Asian states, primarily Kazakstan and Kyrgyzstan.The physical separation of what had been a relatively compact Meskhetian Turk community in Uzbekistan, compounded by the demoralization of sudden loss, dealt the repatriation efforts a blow from which it has yet to fully recover, according to some Meskhetian Turk leaders. They are quick to proffer conspiracy theories, asserting that Soviet authorities feared the Meskhetian Turk leadership in 1989 was on the verge of achieving repatriation goals, therefore the Kremlin intentionally stirred events that would keep Meskhetian Turks divided, and hence pliant. “The Fergana events of 1989 were specifically manipulated by the KGB and other power structures in order to weaken our movement,” said Yusuf Sarvarov, the leader of Vatan, a Meskhetian Turk advocacy organization that spearheads the repatriation effort. Whatever the source of the Fergana events, Meskhetian Turks are still struggling to find the cohesiveness that would facilitate repatriation. The legacy of the riots also has an ongoing impact on the search for human security.
In the nearly 10 years since the Fergana tragedy, many Meskhetian Turks have managed to recover from the trauma. But not all. In particular, Meskhetian Turks in Krasnodar are grappling with ongoing insecurity. Chauvinistic leaders in the southern Russian region are carrying out policies designed to make Meskhetian Turks feel unwelcome. The level of discrimination is such that Meskhetian Turk leaders, as well as international observers, warn about the possibility of interethnic disturbances that, for the third time in the last 55 years, could culminate in the forced displacement of thousands of Meskhetian Turks.
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