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Meskhetian Turks and the Regime of Citizenship in Russia1

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Meskhetian Turks and the Regime of Citizenship in Russia1 MESKHETIAN TURKS AND THE REGIME OF CITIZENSHIP IN RUSSIA1 Lisa Koriouchkina Brown University An emerging regime of citizenship in Russia is analyzed with ethnographic data on people’s responses to the census and by examination of the Russian political imagination manifested in public discourse on ethnic others. Such a framework allows presenting citizenship as a dialectical interplay between various state structures and the subjects of the state (its people). Doing so highlights the paradox of Russia as a country of “immigration and emigrants” and offers an agenda for the study of “social citizenship.” (Russia, citizenship, state, Meskhetian Turks, minorities) Shortly after the first results of the census were released, Russian newspapers proudly announced that Russia ranked third after the USA and Germany in the volume of migration, with 11 million people entering the country between 1989 and 2002. Yet, the census data also revealed an overall population decline that newspapers interpreted as “characteristic of population processes of all European countries” (Zorin 2003). Thus, according to this analysis, Russia was once again at par with the rest of the developed world. Its permanent population was decreasing while the number of immigrants increased. When the initial euphoria about the census data had subsided, a more somber analy- sis of these results appeared. Yelizarov (Bazylyuk 2004) pointed out that a decline in fertility and a rise in mortality would eventually lead to a dramatic loss of the working age population—a decline that could only be relieved by labor migration. He also cau- tioned that the extremely high migration flow of the early 1990s, which compensated for upwards of 50 percent of the population increase, had decreased significantly and now counteracts only 5 percent of the population decline. Similarly, Vishnevsky estimated that given the current low fertility levels and the “horrifyingly high” mortality rates, the population of Russia will decline by 20 million by the year 2025, and that in 2050 there would be 98 million people in Russia (Naryshkina and Vishnevsky 2004). He concluded that only migration could counter the declining trend in population. To do so, Russia would need to accept 700,000–1,000,000 people annually. This also implies that by the year 2100, Russia would become a country of immigrants, and that a large portion of its population would consist of immigrants and their descendants. While Russian analysts portrayed Russia as a country of immigrants and projected further immigration, the European Council and the U.S. government defined it as a country of emigrants. In January 2004, between 10,000 and 20,000 Meskhetian Turks who were resid- ing in the Krasnodar region of Russia were granted political asylum in the U.S. as refugees. A borderland province of Russia, Krasnodar was one of the few regions in Russia that experienced population growth during the intercensal period (11 percent population increase) primarily due to migration. Meskhetian Turks arrived in Krasnodar 39 ETHNOLOGY vol. 48, no.1, Winter 2009, pp. 39–52. ETHNOLOGY, c/o Department of Anthropology, The University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh PA 15260 USA Copyright 2010 by The University of Pittsburgh. All rights reserved. 40 ETHNOLOGY from Central Asia in the early 1990s after an interethnic uprising in Fergana Valley, Uzbekistan. Following the conflict, in the course of which 69 Meskhetians were killed, 1,200 wounded, and houses and other property destroyed (Aydingun 2002), many of the Meskhetians fled to Russia and some of them found their way to the Krasnodar region. During the first 13 years after the fall of the Soviet Union, a small community of the Meskhetian Turks (15,000–17,000) had been consistently denied Russian citizenship. As such, they were not allowed to pursue higher education, were denied retirement pensions and medical assistance, and were discriminated against by the police and state authorities. Their situation did not change despite persistent efforts by NGOs and human rights activists to attract attention to their problem. Escalation of ethnic discrimination in the region prompted international intervention as a result of which Meskhetian Turks were given an opportunity to emigrate to the United States. On the grand scheme of population flows in and out of Russia, the case of the Meskhetian Turks and their emigration seem insignificant; however, it is nonethe- less indicative of a changing socio-political and ideological climate in the country, and of a process closely intertwined with the emergence of a specific citizenship regime in Russia. This article examines the structural, attitudinal, and agentative aspects of this phe- nomenon. A citizenship regime is defined as “a political categorization of citizens by government agencies, even if such categorization is not set out in any document” (Humphrey 1999:25). The underlying premise of this article allows shifting focus away from in- and out-migration to the processes of migrant incorporation. The concept of citizenship regime is advantageous for this purpose as it refers to a practice rather than a charter. As such, it encompasses not only a normative definition outlined in legislation, but also the attitudinal aspects of the political imagination that provides the basis for a definition of a national community and actions undertaken by state officials and citizens to determine the boundaries of the community. The concept of citizenship facilitates studying such phenomena as individual and group belonging and integration. At the same time, it enables retaining an analytical focus on structures that allow or prohibit integration, and thereby offers the best framework for analyzing processes of social interaction (Heisler 1992). Thus, the concept of citizenship regime contributes to socio- logical and political science theory regarding conditions of social integration and social solidarity (Turner 1994:199). The discussion that follows first outlines the political imagination of the regional state administration affecting federal legislation on citizenship. While administrative institutions are identical in various regions of Russia, their governments act differently with regard to the incorporation of immigrants due to the ideological constructions that determine their status. Second, it examines the agentative aspects of people’s relations with the state. Third, the discussion presents citizenship as a form of identity. This tripar- tite analysis enhances the understanding of citizenship regime, introduced by Andersen (1996), and presents it as interplay between structural and agentative aspects. As of 2004, there were between 15,000 and 17,000 Meskhetian Turks (0.3 percent of the total population) residing in the Krasnodar region, a province bordering northeast Georgia. Originally from Georgia,2 Meskhetian Turks were deported to Central Asia in MESKHETIAN TURKS 41 1944 after being accused as “enemies of the people.” In the 1970s and 1980s, over 2,000 Meskhetian Turks were invited by regional authorities to Krasnodar to establish tobacco farms and work at dairy farms and wood mills (Ossipov and Cherepova 1996:5). During the Soviet Period, Georgia resisted Meskhetian Turkish repatriation, alleging a lack of capacity to resettle and employ them. In the late 1960s, Georgian authorities allowed 100 families a year to resettle in Georgia (Conquest 1970:189); but since then, only 185 families moved to Georgia (in areas other than Meskheti-Dzhavakheti) and few remained. In 1989, only 35 families were there. After a conflict in Uzbekistan in 1989, the Soviet Government assisted the Meskhetian Turks in relocating to areas of Central Russia. Some Meskhetians chose to move to the Krasnodar region to reunite with family members invited by local authorities. Others followed, justifying their choice by its proximity to Georgia, com- fortable climate, and advantageous conditions for agriculture, a Meskhetian Turk’s traditional occupation (Ossipov 2002). As the Soviet Government promised to assist the Meskhetian Turks with repatriation to Georgia, the 15,000 Turks in Krasnodar perceived their stay there as temporary. But with the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, this arrangement turned out to be permanent. Despite numerous negotiations on this matter between the Georgian and Russian governments, and the pledge on behalf of Georgia to resolve the Meskhetian dilemma within 20 years (one of the contingency clauses that defined Georgian membership in the Council of Europe), little has been achieved. The few Meskhetian Turks who succeeded in moving to Georgia faced dis- crimination and legal difficulties. In 1999, upon joining the Council of Europe, Georgia pledged to resolve the deportation (Sumbadze 2007:294), and in 2007 a repatriation decree was passed. Few people, however, were able to use the right to repatriate due to procedural difficulties. Thus, even though legislation seemed to have resolved the problem, in practice it remained as it was. Those who remained in Krasnodar were denied citizenship and the basic rights associated with citizenship. (Elsewhere in Russia, the situation was resolved.) As of 2002, their legal status has been defined as stateless people and tem- porary residents. CITIZENSHIP AND POLITICAL IMAGINATION To understand the situation of Meskhetian Turks in Krasnodar, it is important to know the state administration’s attitudes towards migrants and the expectations that define relationships between migrants, the authorities, and the
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