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Head of the Center for the Protection of the Rights of Ahiska Turks Paşa Alihan. Sept. 9, 2009 (Photo: Cihan)
Ahiska Turks are originally from southern Georgia, close to the Turkish border, but their exact ethnic origin remains the subject of debate. Expelled from their homeland in 1944, they experienced discrimination and human rights abuses both pre and post-deportation. Estimates put their numbers at 350,000 to 400,000. Based on interviews with members of the diaspora, this report analyses how Ahiska Turks make sense of their identity and community.
This article examines the myths of historical continuity among the diaspora of the Ahiska Turks and looks at how history has served as a key factor in the formation of diasporic identities. Ahiska Turks1 are originally from southern Georgia, close to the Turkish border, but their exact ethnic origin remains the subject of debate. A number of critical historical events created personal, social and political issues for Ahiska/Meskhetian Turks, playing an important role in the formation of a collective memory, sense of belonging and identity -- processes through which they negotiate the meaning of their history.2,3,4 They negotiate the sociopolitical, cultural, and symbolic landscapes and values with a sociohistorical eye.5
More specifically, to understand the meaning of their history and its impact on their identification, this report examines their narratives of displacement and disarticulation from their homeland and the reasons behind it. Instead of solely focusing on written records on their history, by employing an ethnographic approach, the report looks at their negotiation of identity in discourse.6
This study is based on a year’s participant observation with a group of Ahiska Turks who live in St Louis, MO.7 Before moving to the US as refugees, they previously lived in Uzbekistan and in the Krasnodar region of Russia following their deportation from their homeland in Meskheti, Georgia, in 1944.
In addition to being a participant observer, the author conducted several ethnographic interviews with their consultants.8 These interviews may be termed “narrative performances” in which Ahiska Turks tell their stories, linking/organizing disconnected events and discourses and hence creating continuity between past, present, future and imagined worlds.9
As Erving Goffman, and Elinor Ochs and Lisa Capps suggested,10,11,12 we cannot separate narrative and self since they both construct and contribute to each other. Following these scholars, this author argues that when these Ahiska Turks are telling the stories of being and becoming through their history, they are actually performing their multiple selves via their mediation of past, present and future, and imagined discourses and ideologies.
Approaches to ‘ethnic identity’
Several definitions and approaches to the concept of “ethnicity” exist inprevious and current literature. However, this report draws on the mainstream definitions of the term in sociocultural anthropology.13,14 Three competing approaches to ethnicity were distinguished by sociocultural anthropologists in previous scholarship: primordialist, instrumentalist and constructivist. Primordialist approaches treated “ethnic identity” as a given entity and a naturally developed concept that identifies groups based on an objective essence (their biological and/or cultural relations). By taking an objective perspective, this type of approach treats “identity” as a group phenomenon and sees it as a fixed entity.15,16,17 However, this is questioned in many contemporary theories. Instrumentalist approaches see “ethnic identity” as construct by cultural elites to claim and reclaim power, aiming to increase wealth, power and status. Lastly, constructivist approaches put the emphasis on the subjectivity and the dialectics between “objective features and subjective experiences of identity.”18 Contrary to essentialist approaches, constructivist approaches see identity as being in flux and subjectively constituted in specific social and cultural contexts and maintained by intergroup boundary mechanisms.19
In this article, identity is seen as a social construct that emerges in discourse via practices and performances.20,21 By analyzing instances of discourse, the author examines the way Ahiska Turks make sense of their identity and community by linking past, present and future discourses. Identity formation and identity performances cannot be isolated from individual, group and dominant ideologies.22
In this framework, “ideology” refers to ways that members of a community see and perceive the world around them rather than a political belief system. As stated by Mikhail Bakhtin and Pavel Medvedev,23 “All the products of ideological creation -- works of art, scientific works, religious symbols and rites, etc. -- are material things, part of the practical reality that surrounds man.” Furthermore, as proposed by Valentin Voloshinov: “Everything ideological possesses meaning: it represents, depicts, or stands for something lying outside itself. In other words, it is a sign. Without signs, there is no ideology […] Wherever a sign is present, ideology is present, too. Everything ideological possesses semiotic value.”24 Thus, in this ethnographic account, this report employs a semiotic approach to identity and community in particular, and hence explores how the said connect to past memories and ideologies and construct/index the self in the current discourse. Critical events in their history influence the way they see themselves and the world around them.
An overview of the history of Ahiska Turks
Ahiska Turks are originally from a part of southern Georgia very close to the Turkish border. Expelled from their homeland in 1944, they experienced discrimination and human rights abuses both pre and post-deportation. It is hard to estimate their exact numbers since they have been recorded as members of other national groups, but their population is approximately 350,000 to 400,000.25 Currently they live in nine different countries: Azerbaijan, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, the Russian Federation, Turkey, Ukraine, Uzbekistan, and, most recently, the US.
Their ethnic origin remains a question of debate. According to written records on their history, the majority of Ahiska Turks believe that they are ethnic Turks, though some believe they are ethnic Georgians and converted to Islam at some point in the past.26,27,28,29 In historical documents, they are labeled as “Turks”, “Georgian-Sunnis”, “Azerbaijanis”, “Caucasians” and “Tatars” to list some.30 Three different terms that mark three different ethnic identity beliefs are used to refer to these groups.31,32 “Meskhetian” is used to refer to their Georgian identity; “Ahiska Turks” -- the most widely used among the population itself -- marks their Turkish identity; and “Meskhetian Turks” is widely used by scholars, officials and the media. Lastly, some Ahiska Turks, especially those in the US, would prefer to be called simply “Turks.”
Until 1878 Meskheti, the homeland of the Ahiska Turks, was a part of the Ottoman Empire. In 1878 the Russian Empire captured the southern two-thirds of Meskheti. Later, after World War I, it was returned to Turkey. However, in 1918, Georgia gained independence and won the southern borderlands, including Meskheti. In 1921, the Soviet Union gained control over Georgia. Discrimination against Ahiska Turks peaked under the Soviet regime. In 1944, Stalin declared that Ahiska Turks were untrustworthy and a threat to unification. They were expelled from their homeland to three different regions: Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan. Until 1956, “special settlement regimes” were applied to them that prevented them from benefiting from most political and social rights.33
In 1989 approximately 100 Ahiska Turks were killed, and many of their houses burnt, in a pogrom in Uzbekistan. They were moved to different regions, including Russia, where they were resettled in Krasnador Krai.34 Once in Russia, they faced further discrimination: They were not given their propiska, or residence and work permit.35 Many of them were thus unable to own land, move freely in the country, work legally, register marriages or births, attend higher educational institutions or even benefit from healthcare.36 As a consequence, some 12,000 of them were accepted as refugees by the US, where they were resettled in 33 states between 2004 and 2007.
Identity, consciousness, and the past
The deportation of Ahiska Turks in 1944 was seen as an important crisis in their history and in their identity formation.37,38 Ayşegül Aydıngün found that external factors had a great impact on their ethnic identification.39 Much emphasis is given to a “transition period” during which many historical events took place (the Russo-Ottoman War, 1853-1854; the Bolshevik Revolution, 1917; and the two world wars, 1914-1918 and 1939-1945). Aydıngün claimed that these external factors created ethnic consciousness among Ahiska Turks and gave birth to the “Ahiska Turk” ethnic identity.40 According to her, during this “transition period” and as a result of Soviet governmental policy (that is, seeing Ahiska Turks as “potential enemies of the regime”) their new Turkish identities were strengthened.41
Many Ahiska Turks were forced to leave their homeland in Georgia in 1944. July 12, 2007 (Photo. Muhterem Erkul, AA)
Narrating history and identity
Among Ahiska Turks orality is an important means in maintaining social bonds within the community and transmitting oral histories down through the generations. During visits to families, the elders recount historical narratives of their deportation from their homeland, Uzbekistan and Russia, and the challenges faced during their exile. After a year working with the groups of Ahiska Turks in the study, the author conducted ethnographic interviews. These were recorded digitally and are quoted from in the subsequent sections.
They often talked about how they believe they are ethnic Turks. In their narrations on their history and ethnic affiliation, they take religion and language as a reference point in their identification. All the Ahiska Turks the author met in the US knew how to speak Turkish, even the younger generations. Their Turkish is similar to that of eastern Turkey. They see their language as crucial in terms of maintaining their culture and social bonds.
In the following narration, recounting the pre-deportation years, the speaker makes it clear that language and religion are important means/resources in identification that differentiate them and that hence constitute their “otherness” in the Georgian context. He refers to the past and brings the past into the present to index his identity in current discourse:
We are Turkish. We believe that we are direct descendants of Ottoman Turks, Ottoman Turks who lived in Georgia. We lived in Georgia without losing our religion and language. We had mosques that allowed us to practice our religion. For instance my grandfather was the leader of the mosque in our region.
They know that in some written records they are identified as an ethnically diverse group that was united after its deportation from Meskheti in 1944. However, in the oral histories they grow up listening to, their affiliation with the Ottoman Turks is underlined. Here, one of the consultants again stresses religious affiliation and its role in ethnic identification in reference to their differentiation from Georgians:
I do not believe that we come from a Georgian ethnic [group]. Whoever claimed that, I don’t believe it. We see that there are Turks in Balkans, there are Turks in Yugoslavia, there are Turks all over the world. Like all of those groups, we settled in that region [Meskheti]. I don’t believe that we are ethnic Georgians who converted to Islam at some point in the past. This is because I know that my father was Turkish, my grandfather was Turkish, my great grandfather was Turkish. We saw that on their graves there are the moon and the star and Arabic script. These also proved that we are Turks.
These narrations show that they see religion and their Turkish ethnic origin as two important and inseparable components of their ethnic identity. This also reveals the dialectics in the interrelation and negotiation of global and local histories in discourse.42,43,44
In another excerpt, an elderly person who witnessed the oppressions in Georgia by Soviet forces and their deportation from their homeland in 1944 talks about the situation before and after. He actually constructs the Russians as the “others,” marking their difference through their religion. The oral histories reflect their belief that they were discriminated against due to their religion and close ties with Turks across the border.
Ahiska was a place where only Muslims were living at that time. We had factories, our own police station, mosques and everything we needed. We saw how this place was burnt by Russians. Even if they were the enemies of us, some Russian people cried at the situation. This demonstrated how big the oppression was. Some women wore male costumes and tried to defend our territory, and some others had to jump into the burning houses and died to protect their purity.
In the following excerpt, an Ahiska Turk considered a community leader in t St Louis, MO, narrates the reason behind their displacement from their homeland. This narration shows how people’s sense of historical consciousness helps them differentiate themselves from social others and hence represents the starting point of their ethnogenetic process.45,46,47
In the 1944 deportation, Crimean Tatars were seen as enemies of the regime and deported. However, in our case they deported us due to our religion and being close to Turkish territory. Soviets thought, “You are Turks and you would like to unite with Turks across our borders.” For this reason, they saw us as a threat and deported us from our homeland. They also did it for another purpose. Stalin was a Georgian. He would like to clean the area for Georgians and to open a larger area for Georgians to live in.
As illustrated above, before their deportation from Georgia, Ahiska Turks saw themselves as Turks affiliated with the Ottomans and distinguished themselves from other Turkic tribes living in Central Asia. Historical consciousness of their struggles and their “otherization” from Soviet forces and Georgians has formed both a reflexive awareness of their ethnic affiliation and a reflexive oral history transmitted from generation to generation.
1944 deportation and re-lexicalizing identity
Until their deportation, Ahiska Turks said that they were referring to themselves solely as Turks. Following deportation they started to identify themselves as “Ahiska Turks” to make others understand their origin. However, they still faced problems in the political arena, since few people knew of the specific region, Ahiska. Thus, they decided to identify themselves as “Meskhetian Turks” so as to make their voices heard by others internationally and claim the rights to their homeland. They see this not as a change in identity but in lexicalization. As one of the Ahiska Turks put it:
We are Turkish. However, we should bring our situation after the deportation to international arenas in order to find a solution to our problem. Our leaders suggested we identify ourselves as “Meskhetian Turks.” When we tried to discuss our situation with others in international arenas, they asked us “Where is Ahiska?” Then we chose to refer to ourselves as “Turks from the Mesketia region.” Our identification by others as “Meskhetian Turks” is the result of this pseudonymous name. However, it is only a pseudonym.
However, they faced another forced relocation in 1989 after the pogrom in Uzbekistan. In the following excerpt, an Ahiska Turk explains how history repeats itself and how they had no choice but to relocate.
Once, my father was telling me about their deportation in 1944. I couldn’t be patient and asked him why you couldn’t do anything and allowed them to make you leave our homeland. My father did not say anything and kept quiet after hearing my question. However, I did understand him and found a better answer to my question in 1989 when we were again forced to leave Uzbekistan to Russia. Time brought me the answer.
However, after the pogrom, they did not see Uzbeks as enemies; rather, they believed that they were only actors in a drama written by Russian forces:
They used Uzbeks in this pogrom, however Uzbeks are also Muslims like us. We believed that Russia planned it this way. They called some Uzbeks to come and live in the cold parts of the Russia. However, they rejected it. To make the Ahiska Turks go and live in these parts of Russia they planned this pogrom. However, they again did not reach their goal. We also rejected living there and moved to the southern part, known as Krasnodar, which is warmer.
Even though they were deported by Uzbeks, Ahiska Turks argue that Uzbeks were used by Russian forces purposefully. Ahiska Turks say that they borrowed some Uzbek traditions but that they did not permit intermarriage, since they saw the Uzbeks as less conservative in their religion. According to Ahiska Turks, the “otherness” Uzbeks is not just due to their assimilation but also to different treatment of Uzbeks and Ahiska Turks by Soviet forces.
New settlement, experiences and challenges
Denial of the prospika meant the Ahiska Turks in Krasnodar were refused many rights and were forced to work on rental lands to survive. Ahiska Turks believed that they were discriminated against for being Turkish in Russian territory. One gave the following explanation:
One time, the mayor of Krasnodar declared in a public speech that Ahiska Turks are ethnically Turkish. Krasnodar is very close to Turkish territory. They came here for a purpose, which is to help Turkey reach their goal. However, that is not the reason we settled in Krasnodar. They wanted us to settle in a place that is the northern part of Krasnodar. It was a cold place that we did not get used to. Therefore we decided to move to the southern part to find a warmer place to live. Krasnodar is also close to our homeland, which makes us feel more at home.
One of the Ahiska Turks, interviewed by Malika Mirkhanova in her article,48 shared his experience:
Soon after our arrival, we managed to buy a house in Krasnodar. The Greeks and Tatars were leaving there at that time and sold their houses to us for cheap. We had some money because the Uzbek government bought our houses. The conditions in Krasnodar were terrible. There was no gas. We had to start our lives from the very beginning. The first two years we were allowed to drive our cars with Uzbek plates. Then after the collapse of the Soviet Union they gave us special car plates, which started with the letters KKZ. This was a good way for militia to recognize Turks and ask them for money. Then they changed the plates to a yellow color, which helped them identify us from a distance. After 1996 they stopped issuing plates for Turks. Every 45 days we had to pay 288 roubles […] [just so that] so we could live there!
The consultants narrated that not all Ahiska Turks faced such challenges in Russia; some were welcomed and treated well by local hosts. However, many, especially those living in Krasnodar Krai, faced new problems and tried to make their voices heard in international arenas, leading to their acceptance into the US as refugees.
Conclusion
This study demonstrates how a group of Ahiska Turks make sense of their history and how their interpretation of several critical historical events influences the way they see and position themselves within these events. In their narrations of displacement and disarticulation from their homeland, they link and organize connected and disconnected events and discourses, and so create continuity between past, present, and future.
Arguing that their ethnic, cultural, and religious affiliations led to their experiencing discrimination and human right abuses, they see their Turkishness and religion as important components in their identification, and hence in constructing their otherness from other groups with whom they coexisted. Narratives of their history are in primary importance in terms of transmitting their oral history, and hence their reflexive awareness of their history, from generation to generation.
This ethnography was conducted during the early years of their resettlement in the US. It will be interesting to look at their ways of positioning themselves within their new settlement via negotiating the past and present as time continues to pass.
Endnotes
1. The term “Ahiska” comes from “Akhaltsikhsk,” the major town in Samtskhe-Javakheti (Meskhetia).
2. Jonathan Friedman, “The Past in the Future: History and the Politics of Identity, American Anthropologist,” New Series 94:4 (1992): 837-859.
3. Henry Goldschmidt, “The voices of Jacob on the streets of Brooklyn: Black and Jewish Israelites in and around Crown Heights,” American Ethnologist 33:3 (2006), 378-396.
4. Jonathan Hill, Ethnogenesis in the Americas, 1492-1992, History, Power, and Identity (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1996).
5. Waltraud Kokot, K. Tololyan, and C. Alfonso, Diaspora, Identity and Religion: New Directions in Theory and Research, (Routledge, London, 2004).
6. Jonathan Hill, Ethnogenesis in the Americas.
7. I first met Ahiska Turks when I was in Baltimore, MD, in Spring 2005. I made frequent visits to their homes to listen to their narrations for five months. After moving to Illinois, I met the ones in St. Louis, MO, in fall 2005. From fall 2005 to fall 2007, I visited several households in addition to attending several events in the St. Louis area. For this report I conducted several ethnographic interviews with 10 different Ahiska Turks and recorded the interviews with a digital recorder in spring 2008. I asked for their permission to record and transcribe the data. During my participant observation from 2005 to 2007 I did not record anything but took field notes of my observations.
8. Ethnography is both a product and a process of research. Participant observation, which originated in anthropology, is a method of data collection in which an ethnographer both participates and observes people and communities.
9. Elinor Ochs and Lisa Capps, “Narrating the Self,” Annual Review of Anthropology 25 (1996): 19-43.
10. Ibid., 19-43.
11. Erving Goffman, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1959).
12. Erving Goffman, Frame Analysis (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1974).
13. Jonathan Hill, Ethnogenesis in the Americas.
14. F. Barth, “Introduction,” In F. Barth ed. Ethnic Groups and Boundaries (London: Allen & Unwin, 1969).
15. Jonathan Hill, Ethnogenesis in the Americas.
16. Alf Hornborg and Jonathan Hill, Ethnicity in Ancient Amazonia: Reconstructing Past Identities Form Archaeology, Linguistics, and Ethnohistory (Boulder: University Press of Colorado, 2011).
17. Anthony D. Smith, “Chosen peoples: Why ethnic groups survive,” Ethnic and Racial Studies 15, no. 3 (1999): 440-449.
18. Alf Hornborg and Jonathan Hill, Ethnicity in Ancient Amazonia.
19. Alf Hornborg and Jonathan Hill, Ethnicity in Ancient Amazonia.
20. Leighton C. Peterson, Technology, Ideology and Emergent Communicative Practices among the Navajo (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Texas, Austin, 2006).
21. Joel Sherzer, “A Discourse-Centered Approach to Language and Culture,” American Anthropologist 89:2 (1987): 295-309.
22. In this study, drawing mainly from the Russian concept of ideologiya, the notion of “ideology” is viewed in a more general sense and less politically colored than the notion of “ideology” presented in Marxist thought.
23. Mikhail Bakhtin and Pavel N. Medvedev, The formal method in literary scholarship: A critical introduction to sociological poetics, Albert J. Wehrle trans. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1978 [1928]).
24. Valentin Nikolaevich Voloshinov, Marxism and the Philosophy of Language (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1986 [1930]).
25. Ayşegül Aydıngün, A., Harding C. Balim, M. Hoover, I. Kuznetsov, and S. Swerdlow, Meskhetian Turks: An introduction to their history, culture and resettlement experiences (Washington, D.C.: Center for Applied Linguistics, Cultural Orientation Resource Center, 2006): 188.
26. Malika Mirkhanova, “People in Exile: The Oral History of Meskhetian Turks (Akhyskha Turkleri),” Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs 26:1 (2006): 33-44.
27. Ayşegül Aydıngün, et al, “Meskhetian Turks: An introduction.”
28. Ayşegül Aydıngün, “A deported nationality: The Ahiska Turks,” Perceptions: Journal of International Affairs 3:4 (1999): 120-129.
29. Charles Blandy, The Meskhetians: Turks or Georgians? A People Without a Homeland (Surrey: RMA Sandhurst, The Conflict Studies Research Centre, 1998).
30. Oskari Pentikäinen and Tom Trier, “Between Integration and Resettlement: The Meskhetian Turks,” European Center for Minority Studies Working Paper 21 (September 2004).
31. Ayşegul Aydıngün, et al, “Meskhetian Turks: An introduction.”
32. Ayşegul Aydıngün,” Creating, recreating, and redefining ethnic identity: Ahiska (Meskhetian) Turks in Soviet and post-Soviet contexts,” Central Asian Survey 21:2 (2002): 185-197.
33. Steve Swerdlow, “Understanding Post-Soviet Ethnic Discrimination and the Effective Use of U.S. Refugee Resettlement: The Case of the Meskhetian Turks of Krasnodar Krai,” California Law Review 94 (2006): 1827.
34. Steve Swerdlow, “Understanding Post-Soviet Ethnic Discrimination.”
35. Ronald Grigor Suny, “Provisional Stabilities: The Politics of Identities in Post-Soviet Eurasia,” International Security 24:3 (2000): 139-178.
36. Malika Mirkhanova, “People in Exile.”
37. Ayşegul Aydıngün, et al, “Meskhetian Turks: An introduction.”
38. Steve Swerdlow, “Understanding Post-Soviet Ethnic Discrimination.”
39. Ayşegül Aydıngün, “Creating, recreating, and redefining ethnic identity.”
40. Ibid.
41. Ibid., 188.
42. Jonathan Hill, Ethnogenesis in the Americas.
43. Alf Hornborg and Jonathan Hill, Ethnicity in Ancient Amazonia.
44. Jonathan Hill, Rethinking History and Myth: Indigenous South American Perspectives on the Past (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1988).
45. Jonathan Hill, Ethnogenesis in the Americas.
46. Alf Hornborg and Jonathan Hill, Ethnicity in Ancient Amazonia.
47. Jonathan Hill, Rethinking History and Myth.
48. Malika Mirkhanova, “People in Exile.”
