One winter night in 1944, the brother was separated from his brother and they were all sent to other villages far from their motherland. Thousands of them lost their lives in that journey into the unknown, which is a black mark in human history, and is still in memories and hearts.
The pain of exile and homesickness is still as fresh as the first day in the hearts of Ahiska Turks, whom Joseph Stalin, the leader of the USSR, plundered from their homeland 78 years ago and sent in train cars to the diaspora.
One night in the winter of 1944, on November 14, the brother was separated from his brother and they were all sent to other villages. Thousands of them lost their lives on that journey into the unknown, which is a black mark in human history, and is still in memories and hearts.
With the advent of the Soviet Union to power, the persecution that began in the time of the Russian tsarism continued against the Muslim Turks who lived in the Ahiska "Meskhetian" region, located on the border between Georgia and Turkey, according to a report published by the Anatolia Agency on the 77th anniversary.
The origin of the story
The Ahiska region was associated with Georgia, which remained within the borders of the Soviet Union after World War I. This period marked the beginning of the suffering of the "Meskhetian" Turks, as was the case for all Turkish and Muslim communities in the then Soviet Union.
These pressures gradually increased under Stalin, when the great thinkers of the Meskhetian Turks were arrested on various pretexts and either killed or exiled. The surnames of the Turks were also changed, and thousands of soldiers were recruited in Ahiska and its suburbs on the basis of "protecting the borders," according to a report published by TRT Haber .
According to the report, about 40,000 Ahiska Turks were sent to the front to fight the Germans, while the women and elderly people who were left behind worked in the construction of the railways. However, they did not know that building this railway would be the means to banish them.
According to Anadolu Agency , although they fought in the Russian army in World War II, the leader of the Soviet Union at the time, Joseph Stalin, signed the ban on the Ahiska Turks. And with that, the "journey into the unknown" began for the Turks of that region, who were forced to leave their homeland, where they were born and raised. Upon sudden news one night at the behest of Stalin, they set out on a horrific journey of deportation by being loaded into specially designated wagons called the "Death Train".
Journey of denial
During the journey of exile in which they were forcibly sent to the interior of the Soviet Union, the number of dead was estimated between 90 thousand to 117 thousand Ahiska Turks, due to hunger, cold and disease on the way, according to reports of organizations quoted by TRT Haber .
According to Anatolia , after being distributed to different regions, the Ahiska Turks lived for years without hearing from each other. The Soviet administration, in the labor camps it established, made the Ahiska people work in the most heavy jobs and subjected them to oppression, without distinction between women, the elderly and children.
After their exile, many rules were set for them not to leave their places without permission, and they were forbidden to live in Soviet cities. Ahiskas who broke these rules were banished to Siberia for 25 years, along with their relatives.
While the Stalin administration stated at the time that the reason behind this denial was based on allegations of "collaboration of the Ahiska Turks, whose men were at the forefront with the Russians, with the Nazis in World War II." However, with the dissolution of the Soviet Union, it became clear that this claim was not true and that the real purpose behind the exile of the Crimean Turks and Alahiska was to cleanse the Black Sea region of Turks , according to the records of the USSR.
Promises of resettlement
The descendants of the Ahiska people, who were removed from their homeland and survived wherever they go, continue their lives in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan, the Russian Federation, Ukraine, the USA and Turkey. Among the peoples of the Caucasus who were exiled in 1944, those who could not return to their homeland in any way were the Ahiska Turks,
While there are approximately 20,000 people living in the Ahiska district today, they constitute a very small part of the population in the area. There are approximately 550-600 thousand Ahiska Turks living around the world who have one thing in common, which is their longing to return to their motherland.
For its part, Georgia, which became independent from the Soviet Union in 1991, committed itself to resettle the Ahiskas in their homeland during its admission negotiations to the European Council in 2007, but has not fulfilled the promises made so far, according to TRT Haber .
It should be noted that a group of Ahiska Turks settled in the Turkish city of Igdir, according to the Law of Reception and Settlement of Meskhetian Turks , which was approved by the Turkish Parliament in 1991. While other groups preferred to live in cities such as Istanbul, Bursa, Ankara and Izmir.
The Presidency of Turks Abroad and Related Communities (YTB) , which is one of the institutions of the Republic of Turkey, which has not spared its support for the Ahiska people, has signed many projects in order to keep the memories of the exile of the Ahiska people alive and pass them on to the next generations. In the past nine years, the Ahiska Turks have visited the Meskhetian region of Georgia several times with the support of the Turkish Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Turkish Cooperation and Coordination Agency (TIKA).
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