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Copyright of Journal of History / Habaršy Tarihi Seriâsy is the property of Al-Farabi Kazakh National University and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This study examines how relocation to the US influenced the identity maintenance of the Muslim Meskhetians. In 1944, as a result of Stalin's social policy to clean the southern border of the Soviet Union of "undesirable peoples", a Muslim population, primordially comprised of Turkish-speaking Meskhetians, was deported from Georgia to Central Asian republics. After ethnic conflict in Uzbekistan in 1989, a part of this population and the informants for this research, relocated to Russia and from there to the US. Guided by previous studies on cultural adaptation and identity maintenance among migrants, the given study was conducted to identify how this group has reshaped its identity after the resettlement to the US. Based on 30 in-depth qualitative interviews with Meskhetian Muslims living in the states of Pennsylvania and Illinois, the study demonstrates the effects of the relocation on the maintenance of Muslim Meskhetian identity and belonging. Using theoretical concepts of identity, place identity and imagined communities, this work illustrates how American cultural influence reflects on Muslim Meskhetians' perceptions of culture and ethnic identity in the US. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The repatriation and inclusion of Muslim Meskhetians, forcefully displaced by the Soviet government from Georgia to Central Asia during the 1940s, is still ongoing. In 1977, some Meskhetian families settled in the village of Nasakirali in western Georgia. The Soviet Georgian government built houses for the repatriates in a separate district, referred to as the “Island.” The location acquired a symbolic meaning for Meskhetians. After 40 years of repatriation, Meskhetians still remain “islanders:” isolated from the majority population, speaking a different language, practicing a different religion, and facing different employment opportunities. This study explores the coping mechanisms used by Muslim Meskhetians to sustain themselves and their families and improve their social conditions in a strictly Christian post-socialist country where “Islam is taken as a historical other.” The study primarily asks how employment/seasonal migration in Turkey changed the lives of Meskhetians by adapting their social, cultural, economic, and symbolic capital and became the only viable solution for overcoming social marginalization. The study explores how informality allows social mobility, changes gender attitudes, and helps “islanders” reach the “mainland” by becoming “Halal” - truthful and reliable. The study applies Pierre Bourdieu’s concepts of “capital” and “symbolic power” for understanding Meskhetians’ informal economic practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ethnicity and, by extension, ethnic identity, are problematic concepts to define. This article explores self-defined boundaries of ethnic identity by framing ethnicity as a communicative process through a narrative study focusing on a particular refugee group called Meskhetian Turks. Twelve in-depth interviews were analyzed for emerging themes. The results revealed three inter-connected themes demonstrating the significance of (1) the past, (2) cultural preservation, and (3) a sense of community. Thus, the study demonstrated self-defined borders of ethnic identity and revealed ethnicity as a communicative process, whose emergence, preservation, and continuity depends solely upon communication. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Black Sea / Karadeniz is the property of Black Sea / Karadeniz and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This study examines the socio-cultural life in the new land and integration processes into the host community of the 75 Meskhetian Turkish households resettled in Denver, Colorado. The traditional homeland of the Meskhetian Turks, as one of the dozens, if not hundreds, immigrant communities living the U.S.A., is Akhaltsikhe, a district in the region Samtskhe-Javakheti within the borders of the modern-day Georgia. In 1944, the Meskhetian Turks were forcibly removed from their homeland and exiled en masse to various countries in Central Asia by the Soviet Union. A significant part of those resettled in Uzbekistan were transferred to the city of Krasnodar in Russia, after the Ferghana Events of 1989. In 2004, due to the conditions of resettlement, 12,500 Meskhetian Turks immigrated to the U.S, under a refugee program, and dispersed throughout 26 states. Using the methods such as surveys, in-depth interviews and participant observation with an integrated approach, this study examined the family and community social structure of the Meskhetian Turks currently living intensively in Denver, Colorado. The study illustrated their cultural aspects, and tried to identify the present day of the process of integration into the U.S. society, as well as to envisage the probable future of this integration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines the myths of historical continuity among the diaspora of the Ahiska/Meskhetian Turks, who are originally from southern Georgia. It examines the narratives of displacement of the Ahiska Turks and disarticulation from their homeland as well as the reasons behind it. The article also discusses several definitions and approaches to the concept of ethnicity and presents an overview of the history of the Ahiska Turks.

This study focuses on the cultural characteristics of Ahiska Turks in Wheaton, Illinois in the United States. By trying to understand the culture of the participants, I sought to shed light on how the Ahiska Turks managed to cope with the hardship they experienced and yet preserved their ethnic identities. In this multicase study, I interviewed six male Ahiska Turks. As a result of my analyses, eight themes emerged: family, religion (i.e., Islam), language (i.e., Turkish), communal life, endogamy, authoritarianism, oppression against the preservation of culture and identity, and education for upward mobility. The Ahiska Turks' agrarian way of life, the preservation of their language, and their preference of integration to the larger society for acculturation make them who they are today. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Electronic Turkish Studies is the property of Electronic Turkish Studies and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

An emerging regime of citizenship in Russia is analyzed with ethnographic data on people's responses to the census and by examination of the Russian political imagination manifested in public discourse on ethnic others. Such a framework allows presenting citizenship as a dialectical interplay between various state structures and the subjects of the state (its people). Doing so highlights the paradox of Russia as a country of "immigration and emigrants" and offers an agenda for the study of "social citizenship." [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Electronic Turkish Studies is the property of Electronic Turkish Studies and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The article focuses on the odyssey of the Meskhetian Turks, in an attempt to understand both the current state of minority rights in post-Soviet space and the potentials of the U.S. refugee resettlement as a tool for their protection. It endorses the proposition that an understanding of the case of the Meskhetian Turks provides valuable insights for protecting minority rights in post-Soviet space and for effectively using the refugee admissions program.

This paper examines the plight of the Meskhetian Turks ( Akhyskha Turkleri ) originally from Georgia, who subsequently relocated to Central Asia by order of Stalin, later migrated to Russia just prior to the break-up of the USSR, and in the post-Soviet era, a sizeable population immigrated to the United States. After researching the subject and conducting interviews with a number of Meskhetian Turks residing in the US coming from various professional and socio-economic backgrounds, my findings suggest that the most prominent feature of these people is their multiple, non-voluntary relocations and experience of discrimination by host populations everywhere. Indeed, like most other minorities persecuted by majority rule worldwide, the hardships of the Meskhetian Turks are derived from social and political conditions not of their making—it is as though they have been the pawns in a world shaped largely by local and international political agendas. This paper examines the origins of Meskhetian Turks; their various deportations; the hardships that they and their predecessors endured under Stalin's administration and the Ferghana Pogrom of 1989; their successive persecution in Krasnodar, Russia; and their current life in the United States. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discusses the rehabilitation of the Ahiska or Meskhetian Turks to their home villages in southern Georgia from where they were deported by Joseph Stalin in 1944 to Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. Strategic importance of Meskheti-Javakheti; Division within the Ahiska Turk community; Russian and Turkish policies concerning the rehabilitation of the Ahiska Turks.