The issue of the deportation of Meskhetian Turks from the Georgian SSR to Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan in 1944

Abstract

The article is devoted to the investigation of deportation of Meskhetian (Ahiska) Turks, a small non-titular group who has experienced multiple displacements, violent persecution, and ongoing exile since 1944. As a result of these studies, based on historical facts, the author reveals the reasons for the expulsion of Meskhetian Turks from Georgia to Central Asia in 1944, their lives as deportees and émigrés in third countries and their later rehabilitation and resettlement. The actual data as well as the versions proposed by the Soviet leadership have been studied. This study focuses on an analysis of the historiographical debates about the community of the Meskhetian Turks.