NEWSDAY on Meskhetian Turks

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NEWSDAY on Meskhetian Turks


Newsday
21 May 2000

BITTER LANDS

Displaced Peoples Of The Former Soviet Union
Living in Bitter Lands
Ousted from home, hated in Russia, a people struggle

By Michael Slackman. RUSSIA CORRESPONDENT

First of three parts. 

Krymsk, Russia-The Mahmudov family was all alone, five people working
in street clothing, flannel shirts and sweaters, barely leaving a
footprint as they inched their way along the vast, barren farmland
with nothing but a few blunt hand tools and a crate of seed potatoes.
As darkness gathered, Mahiba Mahmudova's 60-year-old callused hands
continued working a hoe, chopping at the thick black dirt, coaxing it
into rows as her daughter-in-law, Fatima, 28, made small pockets in
the ground and popped in the tubers they hoped would grow into a crop
they could sell on the side of the road.

"We have no choice," said Abdulla Mahmudov, 32, a mechanical engineer,
who worked beside his mother. "When we can, we grow vegetables, then
in the winter we do nothing. Even to do this, we have to rent the land
under someone else's name." "There is nothing else for us to do here,"
said his father, Hamid, 58.

It took more than economic chaos to turn the Mahmudovs into farmers,
moving across the land, learning how to survive. They are Meskhetian
Turks, Muslims deported from Soviet Georgia in 1944 in railroad cars
by Josef Stalin, then run out of their adopted home in Central Asia in
1989.

For the past 10 years, Russian officials, some of whom refer to the
Turks as "beasts" and "human cockroaches," have denied the nearly
20,000 who live here in Krasnodar all civil, political and social
rights. In violation of Russian law, the Meskhetians here are blocked
from getting legal status as residents, so they are unable to work,
marry or even register a car. They are prohibited from returning to
Georgia, now an independent country.

Without legal standing they have become shadows prevented from joining
the everyday life of their community. Abdulla Mahmudov is barred from
working as an engineer. His father, Hamid, can't work as a driver. His
mother can't collect the pension she earned. His younger brother Alim,
26, may not study in the university, and his own children may not
legally take his name.

But that is only part of a policy the Memorial Human Rights Center in
Moscow has dubbed "soft ethnic cleansing." The Meskhetian Turk
community is subject to random physical and psychological harassment
carried out by the local Cossacks, a nationalist-minded paramilitary
group whose ancestors served in the czar's imperial guard. Today's
Cossacks are so closely linked with the government here that it is
impossible to tell where one starts and the other stops. Cossacks have
dragged Meskhetian men from their homes, flogged and beaten them,
harassed their wives, terrified their children, and vilified their
heritage-not only with impunity, but with the aid of government
funding.

"For the first time since Stalin's rule, the rights of a whole
category of the population are being openly violated on the basis of
their ethnicity," Alexander Ossipov, a researcher with Memorial, wrote
in a detailed report on the Meskhetian Turks published this year. "For
the first time in the history of the Russian Federation, the
government is purposely discriminating against one distinct ethnic
group in a non-conflict, peaceful situation. Federal and regional
authorities had the opportunity to prove their respect for laws and
immunity to racism. They took the racism test and failed." The
authorities and their Cossack partners are candid about their feelings
toward the Turks, whom they call "blacks" because of their darker skin
and hair.

In language that has become too familiar in ethnic disputes around the
globe, the Cossacks insist that the Meskhetians rape children, are too
lazy to work, rape the elderly, sell drugs, rape men and threaten to
take over the region because they have such large families. They say
the area is too densely populated to allow them to stay. All of which
is false, according to the police in the region and the government's
own statistics, which, for example, demonstrate that Russians make up
85.2 percent, 4.32 million residents, of the region.

Nevertheless, that is the message put out by Deputy Gov. Vladimir
Gromov, who also happens to be the supreme leader of the local
Cossacks.

"These people are not inclined to do work," said Gromov, who sits in
his office in the administration building dressed in the black
military uniform of a Cossack general. "Moreover, due to their compact
community, being so well organized, they terrorize the local
population, are involved in criminal activities, create problems in
the social sphere. Traditionally, this area is an Orthodox area. Now
there is a discussion of building mosques! "I know only one thing, as
long as the Turks remain here, there will be no calm," Gromov said.
"These people live in Cossack villages. We cannot put up with them." 
Other Cossacks insist the Meskhetians are only getting what they
deserve.

"When the Turks came here for the first time, the local people, mainly
Cossacks, received them understanding their pain, their tragedy," said
Nikolai Berkut, a Cossack leader in the city of Krymsk. "But later,
terrible things started to happen. They don't want to work, not in the
fields or in the factory. They destroy our ecology, our precious land,
using huge amounts of fertilizer. They catch fish by poaching. They
shoot animals in our preserve.

They are a primary source of drugs. They cut down fruit trees-they are
so lazy they don't even want to climb the tree ... There is no room
for them here, on the land where our ancestors spilled their blood ...
We don't want them to live here." Stalin decided in 1944 to deport the
Meskhetian Turks from the Meskhetia region of Soviet Georgia. Though
some have suggested that he made the decision because he feared the
ethnic Turks would side with Turkey and the Axis powers during the
war, other historians say that was a pretext for Stalin, who needed a
work force to plow the fields of Central Asia. They were settled in
Uzbekistan, where they stayed until a pogrom broke out in 1989 amid
rekindled nationalism. They are the only group deported by Stalin that
was never allowed to return.

Overall, there are about 300,000 people known as Meskhetian Turks
spread out across the former Soviet Union, with about 70,000 in
Russia. Georgia has stalled all efforts to begin the process of
repatriation, has denied any responsibility for the fate or future of
its former residents and has insisted that if they are ever to return,
they must deny their heritage and assimilate as ethnic Georgians. The
world community has done little to promote a resolution.

The Krasnodar region is situated in the northern Caucasus, a range of
fertile land and rolling hills. The capital city of the region, also
called Krasnodar, has been the political epicenter of some of the most
nationalistic, xenophobic attitudes in the country. But because it is
relatively close to their homeland, members of the Meskhetian
community decided to settle here after fleeing Uzbekistan.

They moved primarily into Abynsk and Krymsk, two regions dotted by
former Cossack villages of squat stone houses tucked into rolling
hills or set along flat, open fields. After arriving, they learned the
sad truth. They found themselves citizens of a country that no longer
existed, residents of a country that did not want them, and descended
from a nation, Georgia, that would not let them return. Worse yet,
because their travels had not taken them across borders - at the time
this was all within the Soviet Union - they were not legally
considered international refugees, which at least would have given
them some legal standing.

With no outside help, the Meskhetian Turks were at the mercy of the
local authorities. The local governor, Nikolai Kondratenko, did not
allow them to register their residences. In post-Soviet Russia,
citizens who are not registered have no access to any services,
benefits or rights. They are effectively stateless, even denied the
right to apply for citizenship. Instead, the authorities require that
they receive a temporary registration every few months, a practice
that costs the Turks money they can hardly afford and offers no
benefit other than the right not to be arrested or fined.

Though this policy is against federal law and the federal
constitution, the central government in Moscow has condoned the
practice. Deputy Minister Nikolai Bugai, with the Ministry of
Nationalities, said that under the circumstances it is acceptable that
Krasnodar has chosen to defy the federal citizenship law. He said the
locals and the Meskhetians have a different "psychology" and therefore
should not live together. "It is the intrusion of one ethnic group on
another by force," he said.

Those opposed to the Meskhetian Turks say that their biggest concern
is someday becoming like the Serbs of Kosovo, a minority in their own
country.

They also insist that the Meskhetian Turks are being supported by
outsiders, part of a plot to destabilize the region and create an
Islamic state. "I think it is in the plans of western manipulators who
want Russia to disintegrate," said Victor Okhrimenko, spokesman for
the Deputy Governor of Nationalities in Krasnodar. "Some people in the
West don't want a strong Russia." Two years ago, under pressure from
the international community, Krasnodar authorities began to ease up on
the Meskhetians. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees,
the Council of Europe and other international bodies brought together
all sides hoping to find a solution that would give rights to those
who wanted to stay in Russia and allow those who wanted to return to
Georgia to do so. The UN even gave Krasnodar authorities about
$200,000 to renovate schools and medical clinics, as a carrot to
entice the authorities to do the right thing.

But today, the momentum to resolve the matter has been lost as the
world's attention shifted first to Kosovo and then to the conflict in
Chechnya. The Council of Europe, an organization that monitors human
rights, has done little to pressure Russia on this issue, though it
has taken steps against Russia for the violence against civilians in
Chechnya.

"The world community is so preoccupied with other problems, our humble
problems are ignored," said Servar Todorov, Krasnodar leader of a
Meskhetian Turk advocacy group called Vatan, which means homeland in
Turkish.

While the problem remains unresolved in the diplomatic world, Rashid
Akhmedov wakes each morning, pulls on a pair of dirty pants, and with
his father and brothers heads out to a field they have rented for the
growing season. He is 28 years old, has survived the pogroms of
Uzbekistan and dreams of someday being allowed to work as a truck
driver.

"I want to work as a driver, but they don't allow me because I don't
have any papers," he said at the end of the day, as he brushed the
soil from his pants and washed his hands in the only running water he
has, a spigot outside the front door of his home.

But Akhmedov's real concern, he said, is with his children, Gulbakhar,
3, and Lazgi, 2 months, neither of whom can even take his last name,
legally, until he gets the proper registration, called a propiska. "I
want my children to be able to study," Akhmedov said. "If I don't get
my propiska, they will also have to work in the fields." Ezhar
Khalidov, 24, spends his days standing on the side of a busy road
selling potatoes. Like Akhmedov, he said the only work he is permitted
is farming and then selling his crop.

He is not eager to leave Russia, having moved here when he was 14. But
he is frustrated by the constraints. On the last day of April, he was
married by an imam in a formal Muslim ceremony. But the authorities
refuse to register his marriage to Suraya.

"Of course I care," he said, his voice trailing off with a trace of
fear and resignation. "I want an official marriage. I want my children
to have my name. I would like to go to professional school. Now I sell
potatoes on the side of the road." *.

Where They Went In 1989, the Meskhetian Turks began leaving Uzbekistan
and fled to other areas.

Here is where they went.

Azerbaijan 30,000 Ukraine 7,000 Russia 50,0000-70,000

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