Mescheten

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Flag of the Turk Meshet
The historical region of Meshetia or Samtskhe is now part of the Georgian region of Samtskhe-Javakheti .

The Meskhetians ( Georgian მესხები Meschebi , aserbaidschanisch Ahısqa türkləri , turk-meschetisch Аҳыска Тӱрклӓри / Ahiska Türkläri , Turkish Ahiska Türkleri ; Russian Турки-месхетинцы / Turki meschetincy) are a Turkish language ethnic group containing up to its forced displacement in 1944 in Georgia ( Samtskhe Javakheti ), near the Turkish border . Today it is assumed that there are up to 600,000 meshes worldwide, most of whom live in the successor states of the former Soviet Union , but also in Turkey and the United States .

Originally, the name "Meschete" or "Mes comprised ch ete" all the inhabitants of the region (Meskhetia / Samtskhe, the western part of the Greater Region Samtskhe-Javakheti), regardless of whether they were Georgian, Turkish, Russian or Armenian were language.

Alternative names

In the 20th century, the names "Turk Meshet" and "Muslim Meshete" came up in Georgia in order to be able to clearly differentiate the Turkish-speaking Meshet from the Georgian-speaking. In German , besides “Mescheten”, the terms “Mes'chi”, “Mezcheten”, “Messcheten” and “Turk-Mescheten” are common. In Turkey the name "Mesket Türkleri" is widespread. The Georgian government rejects all designations that the Meshes call "Turks" and summarizes them under the collective term "Muslim Georgians".

Origin of name

The name Meshete comes from the ancient Georgian region of Mtskheta , which was in eastern Georgia from 335 to 467. According to the Turkish view of history , the ancestors of today's Mescheten immigrated from Anatolian Turkey to the Caucasus in the 16th century (1578) .

The name "Ahıska" is said to be derived from the Turkish Aksıka . Indeed, there is such a place in Turkey. These Turks were called Ahıska , which was originally just a geographical name that gave the name to both the Turkic immigrants, the region and the present-day province. Until 1878, the Meshes were considered part of Anatolian Turkism. The name Ahıska was already mentioned in the Oghusian Dede Korkut , who referred to an old Oghuz region as Ak-Sıka (White Castle). Achiska or Achalkalaki is the city in Meshetia. It was first mentioned in 481 and finds an appropriate alternative name in the name Akesga . The name Ahıska is better known today than the Persian formكاخ نو( kāch-e nu in German: New Castle).

Main distribution area

Main settlement areas of humans around 1926

The main settlement of the Meshes was once the area around Ajana with the cities Akhaltsikhe and Akhalkalaki (both on the Kura ) and their surroundings. But also in the cities of Aspindsa , Adigeni and Bogdanowka lived Meshetes. However, the main places of Turk-Meshetian settlement were the first two cities mentioned.

Of a total of around 500,000 to 600,000 meshes worldwide, around 150,000 live in Kazakhstan , around 100,000 in Azerbaijan , 90,000 in Russia , 50,000 in Kyrgyzstan and 40,000 in Turkey . Smaller Meschetian congregations still exist in Uzbekistan (15,000), the United States and Ukraine (10,000). Today, fewer than 1,000 meshes live in their original settlement area in Georgia.

origin

The origin of the Meschetes is still unexplored and highly controversial. But now two main directions seem to be emerging:

  1. The pro-Georgian direction: The Meshetes were originally Georgians (Mes'chi) who adopted Islam and finally the Turkish language in the 16th century . Ultimately, parts of the Georgian Armenians and the immigrant ethnic Turks also joined them and absorbed them.
  2. The pro-Turkish direction: The Mesheds were ethnic Turks in whom Armenian (the now Turkish-speaking Chemschilij ) as well as Georgian national fragments had been absorbed .

Linguistically, the Meschetes belong to the south-western group of the Turkic languages . Their language is commonly referred to as Turkish. But it was also pointed out that the Turkish of the Meskhetians has more in common with Azerbaijani than with actual Turkish. And so, for example, the “Metzler Lexicon Language” lists the Meshet language as a sub-dialect of Karapapak .

religion

Several religions were widespread in the former Meshetia region:

  1. Georgian Azerbaijanis have belonged to Islam since the 8th century and are Shiites .
  2. The Turk Meshes and the Chemschilij of Armenian descent have belonged to the Sunni school of Islam since the 16th century .
  3. The Georgian-speaking Mes'chi , however, were Orthodox Christians.

history

Ottoman time

In 1578 Georgia was annexed to the Ottoman Empire after the lost "Çıldır War" . And in the years that followed, many Georgians were absorbed by the Ottoman Turks who immigrated at the time when they adopted Islam and the Turkish language. The later Turk Meshes got their first center in the north-eastern Anatolian province of Çıldır with the capital of the same name. The province and city of Çıldır were later captured by the Safavids and incorporated into the New Persian Empire. But as early as 1635, Ottoman rule was restored there.

Russian Empire

In the 19th century the Caucasus was gradually annexed to the Russian Empire . Between 1853 and 1856, many Meshes emigrated to the Turkish province of Erzurum when the Russian Empire fought with the New Persian Empire for supremacy in the Caucasus. In 1878, South Georgia fell to Russia when the Russian-Persian border treaties were signed. At that time, many of the Turkish-speaking Meshetes emigrated to the Ottoman Empire, but also to the former Azerbaijani khanates , which had also come under Russian rule at that time.

Soviet Union

In the course of the “nationalization” of the non-Slavic peoples of the Soviet Union in 1938 the Turkish-speaking Meshes of Georgia were added to the “ Azerbaijani nation ”.

After July 24, 1944, in the course of extensive deportations according to ethnicity in the USSR , the Turkish-speaking Meshes were also deported to Central Asia . This also included Armenians and Georgians who had married into Turkish-speaking or Muslim families. But the losses were high: only a third of the Mesheds reached the new settlement areas.

But in Central Asia the Meshes were again a persecuted minority. This ethnic group was particularly attacked in Uzbekistan, where they were deported to the Samarkand and Ferghana districts . The majority of Mesheds lived here until 1989. The Turk Meshets were the only members of the Soviet Turkic peoples to have the note " Turk " in their passports. On the orders of Josef Stalin, citizens from the republics of Armenia and Azerbaijan were resettled in the former settlement areas of Georgia . Until the collapse of Soviet power , only around 80,000 people recognized themselves as Meshes, over 60,000 of them in Uzbekistan.

Post Soviet time

In the spring of 1989, the Uzbek Ferghana Valley broke out in a pogrom against the Mesheten ethnic group as a result of the bloody border war with Kyrgyzstan . Over 100 people were killed. The central Soviet government in Moscow flew 16,000 Turkish-speaking Meshes from Uzbekistan to avoid further bloodshed. The target of this group were the other union republics , especially Azerbaijan. This was not originally intended to be a permanent relocation, but as the Soviet Union.

By mid-July 1989, more than 50,000 meshes had left the Central Asian country and most of them tried to get to Georgia. The Turk Meshes now openly claimed territories and expropriated property from their ancestors. This led to conflicts and bloody clashes with the Armenians and Georgians who had settled there after 1944. Georgia broke away from the Soviet Union in 1989 and at that time experienced a wave of nationalism that also led to conflicts with other ethnic minorities in the country. A little later, Georgia plunged into civil war and drove the newcomers from the Mescheti out of the country with brutal force of arms.

A large part of the Mesheds, often speaking Russian due to their long membership in the Soviet Union, then turned to Russia, which most of them, sometimes reluctantly, accepted. Since 1992, the Turkic Meshes living in Russia have been granted Russian citizenship on paper, but in many cases they were not granted them or only after a long time, so that many of them were stateless for a long time. So it came about that another part of the Mesheth emigrated to Turkey.

In addition to around 100,000 meshes in Kazakhstan, today in Russia there are 70,000 to 110,000 members of this ethnic group, the second largest or largest community of meshes in the world, depending on the estimate. The immigration of Meshes to Russia has continued since 1989 until today. They settled preferentially in southern Russia, especially in the Rostov and Krasnodar areas . Another focus of the settlement is the border area between Kabardino-Balkaria , Stavropol , North Ossetia and Chechnya , where there are now a few villages with a majority of Mesketian populations. These include, for example, the municipality of Rostanovskoye (Stavropol region), which has around 5,000 inhabitants , where almost 51% of the population was Meshed in the 2010 Russian census, or Kujan (Kabardino-Balkaria) with 62.2% of the population. In Kazakhstan, the number of Meshes is highest in the areas of Almaty , Shambyl and Turkistan .

When Georgia was admitted to the Council of Europe in May 1999 , the government signed the European Convention on Human Rights and promised as one of the conditions of admission to ensure the repatriation of the Mesheds. After nothing happened in the period that followed, the European Parliament asked Georgia several times at the beginning of 2001 to allow the expelled Turk Meshes to return by the end of the year. After a long period of hesitation, the Georgian government agreed and decreed that only those Turkish Meshetes who openly recognized themselves as "Turkish-speaking Georgians" should be allowed to settle in Georgia. This was categorically rejected by the minority representation of the Turk Meshet in Krasnodar. Since 2009, a new Georgian legislative initiative has enabled the Meshes to return to their old homeland. Only between 2000 and 5000 meshes live in Georgia today.

Meschetic Turks wearing T-shirts that read: “14. November 1944, we have not forgotten the deportation. "

Cultural associations and official representation

The Turk-Meschetian minorities struggled with a host of social, cultural and educational problems after the collapse of the Soviet Union . The Turkish-speaking Meshes try to preserve their national identity in their host countries. But mostly they are absorbed by the closely related ethnicity of the neighboring Turkic peoples .

In order to prevent this, various “Turkish Culture Centers” were set up in Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan. The “Turkish Culture Center” of Uzbekistan was founded in 1992 as the Turkish Center for Civilization in Tashkent . It was to be seen as a counterpart to the “Uzbek Center for Civilization” that demanded the re-Turkishness of Uzbekistan. The chairman of the Turkish Center of Uzbekistan was Dr. Ömer Salman.

A "Turkish Center for Kazakhstan" was founded in Almaty as early as 1991 . Its chairman was Dr. Tewfik Kurdajew Haşimoğlu, who had close ties to the Turkish Ministry of Culture . In this center, Turkish-Turkish in particular was propagated as the “sole high-level language” of the Turkish-speaking Meshes and a re-Islamization of the Meshes was carried out. Furthermore, the center of Almaty was a (semi-official) "immigration office" for the "Central Asian Turks", i. H. for the Turkic minorities of Kazakhstan who do not belong to the respective national people but are grouped together as "Turks" regardless of their origin.

İzzet Maksudov ran the "Turkish Center for Civilization" in Kyrgyzstan, which was founded by Mesheten in 1991 in Bishkek . These three Turkish centers were of great strategic importance in Central Asia, as they work more or less closely with the Turkish Ministry of Culture. For today's Turkey, which financially supported these centers heavily, the centers were seen as the “gateway” to Central Asia. The Turk Meshes viewed Turkey as their legitimate protective power and so these centers also indirectly caused the disagreement between Turks , Kazakhs , Kyrgyz and Uzbeks , as they strictly forbid the Turks to interfere "in internal affairs" of their states.

The official people's representation of the Meshes of Russia was the "People's Movement VATAN", which had its headquarters in Krasnodar and a branch in Stavropol. The chairman was the former teacher Machmud Taferow. The Meshes of Azerbaijan were united in a similarly structured organization, which was called "VATAN, Association of Azerbaijani Mesheds".

See also

literature

  • Erhard Stölting : A world power breaks up - nationalities and religion in the USSR , Eichborn Verlag 1990, ISBN 3-8218-1132-3
  • Roland Götz and Uwe Halbach: Political Lexicon GUS , Beck'sche series, Verlag CH Beck 1992, ISBN 3-406-35173-5
  • Heinz-Gerhard Zimpel: Lexicon of the world population. Geography - Culture - Society , Nikol Verlagsgesellschaft mbH & Co. KG Hamburg 2000, ISBN 3-933203-84-8

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Archived copy ( memento of the original dated December 12, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.ataa.org
  2. ↑ http://www.todayszaman.com/news-253866-historic-meskhetian-turk-documents-destroyed.html
  3. ↑ Aydıngün, Ayşegül; Harding, Çiğdem Balım; Hoover, Matthew; Kuznetsov, Igor; Swerdlow, Steve (2006), Meskhetian Turks: An Introduction to their History, Culture, and Resettlement Experiences, Center for Applied Linguistics, pp. 13-14
  4. ↑ Helmut Glück (Hrsg.): Metzler Lexikon Sprache , Appendix "Map Caucasian Language" (p. 774)

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