Durable Solutions for Meskhetian Turks: the Issue Revisited

Andrei Khanzhin* Durable Solutions for Meskhetian Turks: The Issue Revisited I. Introduction Meskhetian Turks, with their bitter experience of two deportations and years of living in exile, have been perhaps the most neglected group among the peoples forci- bly uprooted by Stalin’s order in . They remain one of the few groups not to have been officially rehabilitated or allowed to return. It is striking how shabby is the state of discourse and analysis in academic and policy circles about the history, culture and current situation of Meskhetian Turks. Though lately the number of publications on the issue seems to have increased, genuinely profound studies of the Meskhetian Turks are still lacking. In-depth knowledge on the level of their integration in different regions, on their preferences regarding repatriation or resettlement, on their lifestyle, practices, history and culture in general is in demand. Indeed, it is urgently needed, for well- informed solutions of their problems are long overdue. Meskhetian Turks want to be officially allowed to return to the region they were deported from; they seek assistance, not obstruction, in their endeavours to integrate into countries they have been living in for decades; many of them long to find a place where they could be spared harassment and the haunting fear of another displacement. Until recently, the international com- munity largely kept aloof from the problems of the Meskhetian Turks. Unfortunately, notwithstanding some seemingly positive recent developments, thus far, progress with regard to their repatriation tends to zero. Problems related to Meskhetian Turks’ integration in receiving societies have not had their fair share of attention either. This article reviews recent attempts to deal with the problems of Meskhetian Turks through the lenses of the three durable solutions, i.e. repatriation, integration and resettlement. It offers observations and reflections upon the appropriateness of these solutions. Finally, the paper seeks to accentuate that it is time to get the issue off the ground and galvanize international support for actions aiming to settle the Meskhetian Turks’ issue. * Research Associate, European Centre for Minority Issues (ECMI), Tbilisi, Georgia. European Yearbook of Minority Issues Vol 4, 2004/5, ISBN 90 04 14953 8, 495-511. © 2006 Koninklijke Brill NV. Printed in the Netherlands. Andrei Khanzhin II. Background To The Issue The Meskhetian Turks, also known as Meskhetians, Muslim Meskhetians or Ahiska Turks are an ethnic group who originally settled in Georgia.1 The question of the ethnic origin of this group has for a long time been the object of debate among scholars and experts and a subject of political speculation. Some claim that they are ethnic Turks, while others insist on their Georgian origin. Until , they lived in the region of Meskhetia, a territory today forming part of the Samtskhe-Javakheti region, which is located along Georgia’s border with Turkey. The Meskhetian Turks speak an East- Anatolian dialect of Turkish. Their traditional religion is Sunni Islam. A. Deportation On Stalin’s orders, between and more than major population groups, including eight entire ethnic groups, were displaced from their ancestral homelands. Among these eight peoples totalling over . million people, was the ,-strong rural Muslim population of Meskhetia, who Stalin ordered to be deported in -. Under the watchful eye of NKVD troops, the entire Muslim population from vil- lages of the region was rounded up, herded into cattle wagons and dumped thousands of kilometres away in Central Asian republics, primarily in the Fergana Valley, Tashkent and Samarkand in Uzbekistan, as well as South Kazakhstan. People were given as little as two hours to pack up their belongings and food for the trip. Many of them recall that there were no explanations whatsoever given as to their new destination or the reasons for their sudden uprooting. Moreover, they were promised that they would be brought back within two months. Thousands are believed to have died during this journey – which lasted days – and in the course of the first months upon their arrival in Central Asia. Their movement to places of new residence was confined to very lim- ited zones - so-called ‘special settlements’. The punishment for disobedience was - years of hard labour in the Gulag camps. In , the Supreme Soviet decreed that the ‘special settlers’ were to stay in their new places of residence forever. The reasons for Stalin’s decision to deport hundreds of thousands of Meskhetians, Chechens, Ingush, Crimean Tatars, Balkars, Kalmyks and others remain unclear. Officially, all these minorities were accused of collaborating with German troops. As for the Meskhetians in particular, it is believed that Stalin wanted to cleanse Southern Georgia of so-called ‘unreliable elements’, as he eyed Turkey’s Kars-Ardah region with the intent to reclaim it after the end of World War II. Stalin’s death – and the subsequent execution of Beria, who was personally in charge of the deportation in - – put an end to the regime of collective condem- nation and forced transfer of people simply because they belonged to a particular ethnic There is no consensus among researchers, activists or politicians concerning the term that should be used to refer to the Muslim population deported from the Georgian province of Meskhetia in . ‘Meskhetians’ is the term widely preferred in Georgia, whereas the majority of Meskhetian Turks in Turkey refer to themselves as ‘Ahiska Turks’. This paper does not endorse any of the terms. The term Meskhetian Turks is used for convenience, for it is widely used among international experts and policy makers. .

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