Deportation of the Meskhetian Turks
Deportation of the Meskhetian Turks | |
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Part of forced transfer, deportation, ethnic cleansing | |
Deaths | various estimates: 1) 12,589 2) 14,895 3) 30,000 4) 50,000 |
Victims | 115,000 Meskhetian Turks, and Hemshins deported to special settlements in the Soviet Union |
Perpetrators | Soviet Union |
Part of a series on |
Forced population transfer in the Soviet Union |
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Policies |
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Peoples |
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Operations |
WWII POW labor |
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Massive labor force transfers |
The deportation of the Meskhetian Turks (
The expulsion was executed by
After Stalin's death, the new Soviet leader
Background
The Meskhetian Turks, also known as Akhiska Turks, originally lived in the Meskheti region in the south of present-day Georgia. There is no consensus among historians regarding their origin. Either they are ethnic Turks or Turkicized Georgians who converted to Islam during the Ottoman rule of the region.[1]
The Ottoman army conquered the Meskheti region, then part of the
In 1918, near the end of
Between 1928 and 1937, the Meskhetian Turks were pressured by the Soviet authorities to adopt Georgian names.
Deportation
On 31 July 1944, the Soviet
The Meskhetian Turks were one of the six ethnic groups from the Caucasus who were deported in 1943 and 1944 in their entirety by the Soviet secret police—the other five were the Chechens, the Ingush, the Balkars, the Karachays and the Kalmyks.[10] Their deportation was relatively poorly documented.[11] Historians date the expulsion of the Meskhetian Turks to Soviet Central Asia either to 14[12] or 15 November 1944.[10] The operation was completed by 26 November.[13] At the start of the operation, the Soviet soldiers arrived as early as 4:00 a.m. at the homes of the Meskhetian Turks and did not tell them where they were being taken to.[13] The population was not given advance notice; the NKVD notification stated: "You are to be deported. Get ready. Take foodstuffs for three days. Two hours for preparation." Studebaker trucks were used to drive the Meskhetian Turks to the nearby railway stations.[9] In the deportation, between 92,307[14] and 94,955[15] Meskhetian Turks, distributed in 16,700 families,[16] were forcibly resettled from 212 villages.[17] They were packed into cattle wagons[18] and deported eastwards to Central Asia. By 4:00 p.m. on 17 November, 81,234 people had been dispatched.[19]
The journey was really horrible. I was only four or five years old and I don’t remember much but it was cold, and there were bodies being thrown from the train all the time... We weren’t allowed a full education in Uzbekistan. We were segregated, oppressed.
— Efratun Tifur, 2016[20]
Official Soviet records indicate that 92,307 persons were deported, of whom 18,923 were men, 27,309 were women and 45,989 were children under the age of 16. 52,163 were resettled in the Uzbek SSR, 25,598 in the Kazakh SSR and 10,546 in the Kyrgiz SSR. 84,556 people were employed in kolkhozes, 6,316 in sovkhozes and 1,395 in industrial enterprises. The last of the deported people arrived at Tashkent by 31 January 1945.[21]
Deported Meskhetian Turks were allowed to carry up to 1,000 kilograms (2,200 lb) of personal belongings with them per family, twice the amount as
4,000 NKVD agents were appointed to carry out the operation.
This was the last Soviet deportation during World War II.
Possible reasons
Unlike the other five ethnic groups of the Caucasus who were accused of Axis collaboration during World War II, the Meskhetian Turks were never officially charged by the Soviet government with any crime; they were not close to any combat. In spite of this, they were deported as well.[10] The German army never came within a range of 100 miles of the Meskheti region.[30] Professor Brian Glyn Williams concluded that the deportations of Meskhetian Turks, which coincided with the deportation of other ethnic groups from Caucasus and Crimea, lends the strongest evidence that all the deportations were a part of a larger concealed Soviet foreign policy rather than a response to any "universal mass treason" of these people.[31] Svante Cornell pointed out that the eviction was a part of a larger Russian policy that had been in effect since 1864: to remove as many Muslim minorities from the Caucasus as possible.[7]
Beria sent a memorandum to Stalin on 28 November 1944, in which he accused the Meskhetian Turks of "smuggling" and of being "used by
The Soviet authorities tried to forge a state out of 108 different nationalities.
Death toll
The Meskhetian Turks were placed under the administration of the
During their first 12 years in the special settlements, the exiled Meskhetian Turks coped with extreme deprivation and isolation from the outside world.[30] They suffered a considerable hardship during the first years in exile. These included poor quality of food and medicine; the process of adaptation to the new climate,[21] epidemics, which included spotted fever,[39] and forced labor.[40]
Estimates of the mortality rate of the Meskhetian Turks differ. The Karachay demographer D. M. Ediev estimated that 12,589 Meskhetian Turks died due to the deportation, amounting to a 13 percent mortality rate of their entire ethnic group.[41] Professor Michael Rywkin gave a higher figure of 15,000 fatalities among this ethnic group.[42] Official, but incomplete, Soviet archives recorded 14,895 deaths[43] or a 14 percent[44] to 15.7 percent mortality rate[45] among the people deported from the Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic. This list included all the groups from the region, but the Meskhetian Turks formed a large majority of them. Soviet archives also record that an additional 457 people died during the transit to Central Asia.[21] High assessments give a figure of 30,000[46] and up to 50,000 dead.[47] By 1948, the mortality rate had fallen to 2.8%.[21]
On 26 November 1948 the
Aftermath
Stalin's successor, the new Soviet leader
Official Soviet publications made no mention of either the Meskhetian Turks nor their region of origin between 1945 and 1968. On 30 May 1968 a decree of Presidium of the Supreme Soviet acknowledged their deportation, but its text claimed that the Meskhetian Turks "had taken roots" in their new homes of Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, and called upon them to stay there.
They tell us we're unwanted: in Uzbekistan the Uzbeks tell us, in Kazakhstan the Kazakhs tell us, and now there are whisperings in other republics... Where can we live, if they won't even let us onto the land of our ancestors?
— Anonymous Meskhetian Turk surgeon in Kazakhstan, 1991[11]
The situation changed, at least on paper, in the late 1980s when the new Soviet leader,
In June 1989, the Meskhetian Turks were victims of
See also
References
- ^ a b c Council of Europe (2006), p. 22.
- ^ Aydıngün et al. (2006), p. 4.
- ^ Aydıngün et al. (2006), p. 5.
- ^ Kiernan (2007), p. 511.
- ^ a b Polian (2004), p. 155.
- ^ Jägerskiöld (1986), p. 217.
- ^ a b c Cornell (2005), p. 170.
- ^ Bugay (1996), p. 137.
- ^ a b Bugay (1996), p. 140.
- ^ a b c d e Wimbush & Wixman (1975), p. 320.
- ^ a b Human Rights Watch (1991), p. 51.
- ^ Warikoo & Norbu (1992), p. 115.
- ^ a b c d Swerdlow (2006), p. 1834.
- ^ Hasanli (2014), p. 248; Bugay (1996), p. 143; Polian (2004), p. 155.
- ^ Buckley, Ruble & Hofmann (2008), p. 204.
- ^ a b c d Hasanli (2014), p. 248.
- ^ a b Khazanov (1995), p. 200.
- ^ a b Brennan, Dan (5 April 2003). "Guram Mamulia". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 2013-11-20. Retrieved 22 October 2013.
- ^ Bugay (1996), p. 141.
- ^ "Meskhetian Turks find shelter after decades of persecution". Irish Times. 31 December 2016. Archived from the original on 2017-04-29. Retrieved 31 August 2018.
- ^ a b c d e Bugay (1996), p. 143.
- ^ a b Marie (1995), p. 111.
- ^ Human Rights Watch (1991), p. 51; UNHCR (1999), p. 20; Bukharbayeva (2019), p. 16.
- ^ Polian (2003), p. 86.
- ^ Markusen & Kopf (1995), p. 115.
- ^ Mikaberidze (2015), p. 191.
- ^ Mirkhanova (2006), p. 33.
- ^ Parrish (1996), p. 107.
- ^ Bugay (1996), p. 106; Pokalova (2015), p. 16; Mawdsley (1998), p. 71.
- ^ a b c d e Swerdlow (2006), p. 1835.
- ^ Williams (2001), p. 386.
- ^ a b Francis X. Clines (7 June 1989). "57 Reported Dead in Uzbek Violence". New York Times. Archived from the original on 2018-08-26. Retrieved 26 August 2018.
- ^ a b Bennigsen & Broxup (1983), p. 30.
- ^ Hasanli (2011), pp. 365, 382.
- ^ Cohen (2014), p. 231.
- ^ Martin (2001), p. 342.
- ^ Pohl (1999), p. 48.
- ^ Viola (2007), p. 99.
- ^ Bugay (1996), p. 147.
- ^ Bhat (2015), p. 33.
- ^ Buckley, Ruble & Hofmann (2008), p. 207.
- ^ Rywkin (1994), p. 67.
- ^ Pohl (2000), p. 267; Travis (2013), p. 82; Bugay (1996), p. 143.
- ^ Parrish (1996), p. 108.
- ^ a b Human Rights Watch (1991), p. 53.
- ^ Akiner (2013), p. 261.
- ^ Jones (1993), p. 14.
- ^ Sakwa (2005), p. 292.
- ^ Bugay (1996), p. 85.
- ^ Kaiser (2017), p. 368.
- ^ Jones (1993), p. 15.
- ^ Perovic (2018), p. 320.
- ^ Human Rights Watch (1991), p. 54.
- ^ Khazanov (1992), p. 1.
- ^ Polian (2004), pp. 125–126.
- ^ a b Aydingün (2002), pp. 185.
- ^ Council of Europe (2006), p. 21.
- ^ Council of Europe (2006), p. 24.
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