Why do Turkish leaders want to meet the Meshketian Turks?
Posted by acorcoran on January 13, 2008
Last week just before President Bush left for his Middle East tour, he met with Turkish President Gul in Washington. Here is an AP story discussing the background of our present relations with Turkey and what those meetings were about. But, what could the last two paragraphs mean?
While in the United States, the Turkish president is to meet with representatives of the Meskhetian Turks. A minority group ousted from the Soviet Republic of Georgia, the Meskhetians were bounced around to other Soviet republics until settling in Krasnodar Krai, a territory of Southern Russia.
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The Church World Service Immigration and Refugee Program undertook what it calls one of the largest refugee resettlement programs in 2005-2006 to bring as many as 18,000 Meskhetians to about two dozen cities in the United States.
Meshketian Turks came to Hagerstown, MD. We were told these Turkish Muslims had been persecuted by Christians in Russia and that although Turkish, Turkey did not want them back. We also heard the rumor that the Bush Administration agreed to take thousands of these displaced persons (displaced at the end of WWII) to help out Turkey, to remove a sticky problem, in the run-up to the Iraq War. And, by the way, the Meshketians did not live in refugee camps but some had homes to sell before arriving in America. So, why would President Gul wish to meet with representatives of the Meshketians in the US? Thought they didn’t want them in Turkey.
In searching around for more information on the Meshketians, I came across a report (scroll down) from the Norwegian Institute for International Affairs which says that the Meshketians did not exist before about 1950 but are a conglomeration of various Turkish ethnic and religious groups (several forms of Sunni Muslim) that have joined together and are “militantly Muslim” and “anti-Russian.” The report goes on to say that many want to emigrate to Turkey. Just great, and so why would the Bush Administration, with the help of contractor Church World Service, feel the need to bring 18,000 to a city near you?
And one last thought, next time you see a Crop Walk in your community think about the fact that you are helping the sponsoring organization, Church World Service, bring more Muslims to America. What! Aren’t there enough persecuted Christians in the world needing help?
30 Responses to “Why do Turkish leaders want to meet the Meshketian Turks?”
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bahtiar said
I am ahiska turk ( meskhetian turk) who live in Hagerstown, MD from 2005. The thing is that Russian governors MADE it a problem, it shouldn’t be a problem at first place! Turks had no passports, and were followed by police. They didn’t want to give people a passport even tho we moved to Russia in 1989 (during Soviet Union- Uzbekistan was part of it) and by the law we had to get it. Keeping turks without passports was good to police’s hands also, because they could get money out of us every time they stop us. That continued for 15 years, finally our problem got loud, and the world heard us, especially USA. We are thankful to America for help! Turkey didn’t do the same because Turkey couldn’t afford it.
Bir Dost said
It is a very interesting subject here. There are two main approaches to Meskhetian (M) Turks that they should not be accepted or let’s give them a chance. For those of you who supports the first idea, I think it is little late because they should be able to get their citizenships by now.
As a person who grew up in Turkiye, I like to talk about the origins of people in there. There are Turks, Kurds, Lazs, Circassians, Araps, Bosnians, Albanians, Macedonians, Greeks, Armenians,Azeri’s and many more neighboring ethnic populations. You can think of Turkiye this way — It’s the Muslim way of America. There are many nations and the dominant language is Turkish.
I, personally am a Meskhetian Turk. I came to the US a year before they started to migrate. Although my grandparents were born in Ahiska, my father was born in Posof — which is the border town in the Turkish side, only a few miles away. I assume my grandparents moved to Posof after the WWI like many other M. Turks there. My point is that I know the region very well and I’ve been there once. I still have relatives out there, so I can hear the news. There is no different between the people who came to Hagerstown and people in Posof and the region. Meskhetians Turks who are 60+ have exactly same accent with the people in Posof. Younger people seem like having a Russian related accent. You can find some ethnic Georgians out there whom speak the Georgian language as well as Turkish. But they never mention themselves as a M. Turk.
Hagerstown has a sister city in Germany — Wesel. In 1960-70′s, many men from Posof emigrated to there as a guest worker. Wesel and neighboring cities have mine sites. These men worked at the mines and they eventually brought their families along with them. They have exactly same origin with the M. Turks in Hagerstown MD. You can refer to Wesel, Dinslaken and find more information about their adaptation to Germany.
My thought about their adaptation to the US is that it will be hard for the first generation. They’ve been through many obstacles. They will keep themselves isolated — not to have any sort of problems. If you think that they are militant muslims — I am just laughing at this. Unfortunately, Turks have many enemies and I am suspicious about the origin of that thesis.
I don’t know the exact number of the M. Turks in Turkiye who came from Russia, but there are a good bit of them especially around Antalya. They work at the Turkish hotels and serving the Russian tourists since they speak the Russian. Also they are spreaded around the big cities of Turkiye. I always run into them in Istanbul, Izmir and etc. when I visit Turkiye.
acorcoran said
Bir Dost, Very informative, thank you for sending this comment. Could you tell us why the M. Turks were chosen to become refugees. I understand that some who came even had homes to sell before coming. We usually think of refugees as living in camps or otherwise displaced.
Bir Dost said
You know that the M. Turks were exiled to Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan and so on. In 1989, they had an attack from Uzbekis and lost about 600 people. Therefore the Soviet Union re-exiled them to today’s Krasnodar-Russia in Caucasians and Azerbaijan from Uzbekistan. When the Soviet Union was collapsed, the local government in Krasnodar did not recognize them as Russians. What I heard from M. Turks in Hagerstown and news from Turkish sites, the local Russian authorities did not recognize them as their citizens. For instance, none of them had a Russian passport and they had a seal on their ID card that said “when the person left the Russia, he or she is not allowed to come back to Russia”.
Recently, there was a problem in Kyrgyzstan similar to what happened in Uzbekistan in 1989. The M. Turks were on the target again and local people want them to leave the country.
My thought about these guys is why the M. Turks’ situation is alive today? If we look at the todays’ Ahiska, there are Armenians in the region. In the past, Armenian rebels provoked the oil sites in the Baku area(This happened right around 1915) and the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline goes through the region today. Since the oil reserves are going down nowadays, somebody wants these guys back to the region and secure the pipeline. They like to pay to the Armenians there to live in somewhere else. Tbilisi government already requested the money from Ankara to pay for the Armenian settlers there. Eventually, the M. Turks will relocate to the region I heard.
Why did they come to the US? Since the US is in war with Iraq and Afghanistan, the US government might want to show the Muslim world that we are not in the war with the Muslims. We help them.
Studentka said
Bir Dost,
I very much appreciate your viewpoint as an Ahiska Turk who grew up in Turkiye. I know several Ahiska Turk families who were resettled to Colorado, and I am very interested in Ahiska history and culture (I study ethnic minorities in the former Soviet Union).
I am traveling to Turkey in a few weeks on holiday and I would love to meet some Ahiska while I am there. I do not speak Turkish, but I do speak Russian. Is there a way I can meet Ahiska in Izmir or Istanbul? Are there particular shops or places I could meet them?
Thank you for your assistance.
Ahiska-in-HagerstownMD said
hi to all of you unsure people. i am a ahiska turk i came from Russia as a refugee in 2005. I wanna say that we are not the same as the turks in turkey, yea i am for real. How we are different from the turkish is we have kinda different cultures, different life, different aspect and we speak kinda lil different than they do. LIFE IN USA IS GOOD, BUT ITS NOT FUN. I LOVE THIS COUNTRY, BECAUSE OF MORE FREEDOM AND THATS IT.
ufuk said
Acorcoran has some very pressing question. Let me try to answer or add more questions on them.
Q:Why were the Meshketians designated refugees in the first place, they didn’t live in refugee camps and we know they even had homes to sell in Russia?
A:Maybe because racism and discrimination was so openly done by the then-governor, they were offered asylum. The governor then was also very anti-semitic which drew Jewish communities’ attention.
Q:Why did the Meskhetian President care to visit them here if they have no connection to Turkey?
A: There is no such position as “Meskhetian President”. There is not a single person who has a say about the whole Mesketian/Ahiska community. Abdullah Gul is the president of Turkey.
Q:Where do you think the Norwegian Institute got the idea that they were militant Muslims?
A: Somebody need to confirm the source. There is nothing militant about Meskhetian/Ahiska Turks. I have drunk quite a bit of vodka with them, as well as prayed.
S:And, in our experience the women were definitely afraid of the men and displayed their fear in English classes.
A:As an anthropologist, I recommend you to be more literate about people’s behavior. What does really fear mean here? I have seen many Meskhetian women working and supporting the family, no reservation to talk to me as a male anthropologist and criticize their husband while they are present.
S:As for your last point, I have no sympathy if they don’t want to go into churches to get aid. If refugees wish to come to America there are some things about this country they will just have to get over and one is our religious pluralism.
A:The group has no problem and shyness to get aid from wherever it comes. Jewish Services and Lutheran were two biggest providers, and I never heard such a complaint about this.
tr said
A very interesting debate is going on here.
Ilham Mamedov said
Hi,
I am an Ahiska Turk, that is same name in turkish for Meskhetian Turks…
Meskhetians are consisting of different nationalities, some are turkish some are georgians, kurdish, armenian, jewish, greek and laz.
But the main number of population of Meskhetians are turkish, you can reach this information anywhere easy. Because of majority in population we are called Meskhetian Turks.
All of us, all this different nations were Forcibly Deported from Homeland and since that it was extremely hard to return back. Even for them who was counting themselves as a georgians.
But again let me tell you that i do have my all ancestors list saying that we are Turks.
So do hundred thousand of ahiska – meskhetian feel themselves as Turks…
Thanks
acorcoran said
To Interested, Thanks for your comments. It seems that you know an awful lot about the Meshketians. Will you help us with some questions?
Why were the Meshketians designated refugees in the first place, they didn’t live in refugee camps and we know they even had homes to sell in Russia?
Did they form some human rights group, as we see the Rohingyas doing, and push for third country resettlement?
Why did the Meskhetian President care to visit them here if they have no connection to Turkey?
Where do you think the Norwegian Institute got the idea that they were militant Muslims?
And, in our experience the women were definitely afraid of the men and displayed their fear in English classes.
As for your last point, I have no sympathy if they don’t want to go into churches to get aid. If refugees wish to come to America there are some things about this country they will just have to get over and one is our religious pluralism.
Interested said
Interesting discussion. I’m appalled by some of the xenophobic comments at the beginning of this discussion, but it seems like some interesting discussion later on. I have experience researching and working one-on-one with numerous Meskhetian Turks, and I want to agree that they are definitely not militantly Muslim. As for the issue about women, their culture is a relatively traditional and conservative one, and women often are taught to revere their husbands, not in a way very different from the way it was in the U.S. in the 1950s. So if women weren’t speaking up in classes, it may very well have been out of politeness and respect for male relatives, rather than fear of them. The women likely felt that it would be showing off to speak up if their husbands or others didn’t.
I also want to point out that what “Meskhetian Turk” said about them not being Turkish is an extremely important point. While they are culturally very similar to Turks from Turkey, their original homeland was in what is today Georgia, not in what is today Turkey. There is a lot of debate about whether they are historically ethnic Georgian or Turkish, but either way, they have never lived inside today’s Turkish borders. They lived in the Soviet Union, and after the collapse of the USSR, they lived in Russia. Although some may wish to go to Turkey, others feel no more draw to be in Turkey, a country they have never seen before, than in the U.S. To say that they should be sent to Turkey if Turkey would accept them is overlooking their very complex history and their ability to choose for themselves.
Anyway, I appreciate the fact that people are trying to think of ways to help with the challenges many Meskhetian Turks have faced as immigrants to the U.S. The Meskhetian Turks I worked with faced two problems: (1) the organization running their state-funded immigration program was Catholic, and as Muslims, it was sometimes frustrating to have to go into churches to get aid. (2) The only mosque in the city where they were resettled was run overwhelmingly by Arab immigrants, with whom they didn’t share a language and who in some cases had very different traditions and understandings of Islam than they were accustomed to. I’m not sure there are solutions to these issues, but they are things to think about.
MeskhetianTurk said
We want to live in a democratic country like USA
MeskhetianTurk said
More than half of the American population is emigrants.And what is the problem That American Gave us refugee too.We are not Turks.We are Georgians but because of the fact that we are muslims Georgia do not want want us.Why?Because it is not democratic
Shota said
Hello.What the problem?The answer why american gave us refugees is that America is the only country which is democratic.I want to say that we are not turks that is why Turkey do not want us.We are ancient Georgian.
Iraqi Heavy Metal band looking for refugee status « Refugee Resettlement Watch said
[...] this policy why we took the Meshketian Turks from Russia and Turkey didn’t take them? In November 2007, the Iraqi metal band Acrassicauda [...]
Tony said
I don’t disagree with you. I definitely think it’s a balance that has to be struck, and at the same time can be hard to strike. So many immigrants in prior generations did not, or were unable to, pass their language and culture on to their subsequent generations. My mother, for example, cannot speak a word of French even though it was her mother’s first language. My grandfather could not speak a word of Irish Gaelic even though it was *his* mother’s first language.
At the same time, I agree that encouraging groups to remain totally separate and cloister themselves is a recipe for disaster. We have to find a way to balance cultural retention with national integration. It is possible. Think of many of the Italian, Greek, Armenian, or Polish immigrants. I know many of them retain their languages and cultures, i.e. their Italianness, Greekness, etc., and consider themselves “ethnically Italian” etc., while still considering themselves firmly Americans.
Unfortuntely like so many things, this appears to be a pendulum. Where it was “drop your native culture and become American at all cost” now it’s “retain your native culture entirely and don’t bother to try to embrace American culture at all”. I think the ultimate key is to balance the two.
acorcoran said
Tony said: I definitely would like to see a lot more done to encourage integration and assimilation, though. I like the idea of hanging onto one’s culture, but I think that has to be done within the larger picture of being a participating and integrated member of the community.
That’s exactly where we are on this… just this weekend I thought about it as every store had something Irish going on. You could buy Irish soda bread everywhere! And, that is great and we all love it—celebrating another country’s culture (the culture of immigrants).
However, in the old days, immigrants were encouraged to assimilate…be Americans first and then keep some of those wonderful aspects of ones original culture.
Now we see an attitude by people in the refugee industry and especially by immigrants from Muslim countries that they don’t have to even attempt to become Americans first.
That is the root of the growing friction…
Tony said
Actually in Burlington, VT, we have a wide variety of refugee groups, including Somalis, Sudanese, Cambodian, Tibetan, Bosnian, and Meskhetian Turkish. We only have Bosnians and Meskhetian Turks here in Central VT. I do know that it’s been a harder fit in Burlington for the Somalis and some of the others, since as you say their cultural background is much more different than the Turks, who are largely familiar with all the items of daily life here, it’s just that the system works differently and the language is a barrier.
I actually like the idea of a church or other group sponsor. The local refugee resetlement organization has been plagued with staff shortages, political infighting with other charity organizations, lack of information and lack of communicating information they have with each other and with people outside, etc. I don’t mean to sound like I’m running them down, certainly at least some of the people who work, or have worked, there have given their all. And at times the different refugee groups have also been tough to work with, being “needy”, so to speak, where they’re constantly needing/wanting people to do something for them. Or they might ask 5 different people to help with something, without letting any of them know the others have also been asked. I gather that’s just how it worked in Russia, but here it causes confusion and bad feelings.
The Turks here are spread between two different towns, and I do know that the larger group in Barre, VT is said to be a lot more conservative than the one I worked with in Waterbury, VT. That might stem from the fact that family-group leaders seem to mostly be in Barre. But even then, so far the English class experience seems to have been the same in both groups, from what other volunteers have said.
I definitely would like to see a lot more done to encourage integration and assimilation, though. I like the idea of hanging onto one’s culture, but I think that has to be done within the larger picture of being a participating and integrated member of the community.
It is of some concern that I think a lot of the muslim spiritual leaders, who mostly seem to be outside the Meskhetian community, give off a much more separatist impression. As in, keep separate, use the system but don’t let yourself become part of their world, etc. I don’t think the community would be any different than the Irish, Italian, Polish, etc. communities if that separatist push were eliminated, and they were given encouragement to join the melting pot, so to speak.
acorcoran said
Tony, thanks for the comments …. we had a slightly differant experience reported to us by a local ESL teacher. She said the men kept the women silent in class. Once the men left–initially for many smokes, but ultimately quit the class the women were much more vocal and participated.
I agree the assimilation issue is the key. The Russian Turks are a bit easier than the very culturally different Africans that have been coming in in such huge numbers that the volags seem incapable of giving them the attention they would need to assimilate.
For that last reason we have advocated that we return to the older system of refugee resettlement where each refugee family had a church or other group sponsor reponsible them and took complete care of them until they learned English and became part of the community.
Perhaps you haven’t had the experience of say the Somalis who have not assimilated and caused much community angst in places like Shelbyville, TN and Emporia, KS. I think it’s very similar to what has been going on in the UK. Sorry to be pessimistic but the present system of resettling refugees is sending us down the same path!
Tony said
For what it’s worth, we have a Meskhetian Turkish group here in Central Vermont. I know several of them, being one of a limited number of people with any knowledge of Russian or Turkish in the area. I agree, they are not militantly muslim by any means. It’s more like the number of Americans who say they’re Christian but they mean they sort of adhere to Christian beliefs because their cultural background is Christian, not that they’ve had a deep spiritual experience or connection to the faith.
As to treatment of women, it’s true that there are things about their culture I disagree with on this, but definitely not true that they prevent or even discourage the women from attending classes or working. In fact, we had a hard time getting the men to even come to classes, or learn much English at all, while the women came and learned everything they could. One of my friends had even told her two daughters before coming here that they needed to not get distracted by boys but they should finish school, go to college, and *then* think about marriage. (Didn’t work on the oldest daugher, who got married last year…).
Any of us who aren’t full blooded Native American are the offspring of immigrants, so we need to remember that when we all start feeling anti-immigrant. And many of our ancestors who came her faced a lot of discrimination. I wouldn’t be surprised to find that many Americans in the 1850s and beyond were very worried about the country being taken over by Catholics as my own Irish and French ancestors came.
That said, I agree, we need to watch carefully and do what Europe didn’t do – focus on assimilation and incorporation of new immigrant groups into mainstream American society. Europe’s problems have come in large part because they allowed, even encouraged, their muslim immigrants to stay cloistered in their own communities and not be part of, or accepted in, the mainstream.
acorcoran said
David, thanks for the information. Did you follow up and see where the Norwegian Institute is getting its information? We would like to know.
Also, if Turkey is willing to take them, that is where they should be. The one’s who arrived in our community appear not to be happy especially when our local Sunni mosque was trying to teach them Arabic.
Additionally, if you have read other articles here, you will see that we have a great concern about bringing Muslim refugees to the US who will not assimilate. Look at the problems Europe is having, especially Great Britain in just the last few days where they are actually discussing the possibility of Sharia Law in the UK. In my view it is just a harbinger of what is to come when our Muslim population reaches a critical level.
David M. said
The information of Meskhetian Turks on this page is almost all wrong, and is therefore due for some revision. I am researcher carrying out field work among Meskhetian Turks, and have had quite a bit of exposure to their lives and history. Allow me to explain the following.
1) The Meskhetian Turks are NOT militantly Muslim. Not in the slightest. After almost 50 years under militantly ATHEISTIC and anti-religious Soviet rule, the Meskhetian Turk are in fact quite moderate and non-dogmatic in their Muslim faith. They identify very strongly with Islam, but more culturally so than religiously.
2) The Meskhetian Turks are a very peaceful people. They have been consistently persecuted, deported, and discriminated against throughout the past 60+ years, and have finally been able to find peace and acceptance in the United States that no other country has been able to afford so generously. They positively love America, and are living the American dream most of our grandparents or great-grandparents came here for.
3) Turkey currently has resettlement measures in place for the Meskhetian Turks; however, they are currently unwilling and unable to absorb all the Meskhetian Turks of Russia (which can number at up to 20,000). Most Meskhetian Turks who have moved here wish to stay in America, become citizens, and raise their children here. American acceptance of Meskhetian Turks, beginning in 2004, is considered to be one of the government’s more humanitarian and altruistic endeavors in recent years.
The Meskhetian Turks are a fascinating, peaceful group of people, who have much to offer this country and who are in situation not very different than most of our ancestors. Please be tolerant, understanding, and accepting of them, though their faith, language, culture, and history may be different than yours.
Ilham Mamedov said
Hi David, if you have a time can you send me your research about Meskhetian Turks please.
I would like to read it .
Thanks
Ilham
John S Bolton said
The Turks presumably don’t want them because they don’t want any more of those whom they regard as troublemakers, potential terrorists and malcontents relative to the semi-secular order there.
Societies where officials enjoy great power do not want diversity; as an inductive generalization, I think you’ll find that this fits with what you know of the world. The other part of this same idea, inductively and deductively reasons that: insofar as officials are below their full totalitarian potential in terms of power relative to the citizenry, they will wish for likely troublemakers to be brought in, as many as can be got away with. The more conflict can be generated, pitting one group of residents against another, the more power is to be won.
boakai1ngombu said
rosters of engineers, doctors, lawyers, should they provide origin info, may be of help.
those having houses to sell before emigrating, to me, indicates professional or semi-pro individuals.
Eric said
This kind of support for Muslims is another reason I can’t stand Bush and why I’m going to support Giuliani. For some reason Bush wants to appease Muslims, perhaps as some kind of atonement for fighting them. He’s out to prove his battle is with “radicals” and not all Muslims hence his recent support for Turkish accession to the EU and now this.
USorThem said
Acorcoran
Thanks for the additional info.
We should have a system for the public to find out more about the origins of all proposed refugee groups. It shouldn’t be considered top secret, classified information.
wow, 18,000 militant muslims invited to live among us and their whereabouts are unknown. That scares the sh*t out of me.
acorcoran said
Sorry, forgot to answer one part of UsorThem’s question. Where are they? I don’t know, we have a few in Hagerstown, MD. There are more in Lancaster, PA and I believe in some other cities in PA… guess we will see if we can find out!
acorcoran said
Frankly, UsorThem, I was surprised to find this bit of information—the militant part. When we first heard about them in Hagerstown they didn’t strike us as alarming especially when they initially rebuffed our local mosque’s attempts to teach them Arabic. And, we even heard through the grapevine that the mosque, which was initially their sponsor, had dropped their involvement with the sponsorship. This is where problems developed with not enough local church sponsorship, so that refugees were left at lose ends with not much help with transportation etc.
We did hear that the Meshketians were pretty strict with the women, not allowing them to speak in English classes.
We were told they got to Hagerstown when an incident occured in Lancaster, PA involving some refugee, and the Church World Service affiliate there was temporarily suspended. A Virginia Council of Churches (subcontractor of Church World Services) representative said at a meeting I attended that the State Department suggested the next bunch of Meshketians come to Hagerstown. All that was back a couple of years.
I have not heard that the Meshketians here have caused any other problems and I am not sure how many are even still in Hagerstown.
The part that is so puzzling to me, is why didn’t we just work with the Turkish government to have them repatriated back to Turkey from Russia. What is the big deal. They are Muslim Turks who now speak Russian. Why couldn’t Turkey just take them in? Why do we pay contract fees to Church World Service (not to mention all the other costs of resettlement) to bring them to America only to have them presumably meeting with the President of Turkey to see about getting back to Turkey.
I’ve said this before, these agencies …UN, State Dept., and volags…just seem to want to move human beings around the world and drop them into cities throughout America in complete disregard for the disruption caused to American citizens.
Not to mention bringing the Middle East conflicts to our cities.
USorThem said
“militantly Muslim”. Oh how freakin’ comforting to know. Not just “devout”, or “moderate” or, “docile”. No, we open our doors to militant muslims while were are “fighting them over there so we don’t have to fight them over here”
Does RRW know where these 18,000 were scattered?
I wish I had known about this BEFORE they were brought here. Some noise could have been made.
I hope RRW can find some way to alert us if any more of these “militantly muslim” refugees are scheduled for delivery.