The Ahiska Turks: A Persecuted Group Seeking Asylum From Russian Imperialism in the United States

Executive Summary:

• The Ahiska Turks ethnic group have faced ongoing persecution and forced displacement since the Soviet era. Attacks and discrimination persist in Russia, and ethnic discrimination, threats, and coercion have forced many to seek asylum in the United States.
• Since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Ahiska Turks living in Russia and occupied Ukrainian territories have faced increasing challenges, including forced recruitment into the Russian military, where they are often sent into high-risk combat areas.
• The Ahiska Turks report systemic discrimination based on ethnicity and religion, exemplifying the continued “imperial mentality” in Russia’s approach to ethnic minorities.

Russia’s war in Ukraine has been marked by the genocide of the Ukrainian identity and Russification of its children. Such practices have been a feature of Russian politics regarding certain groups, such as the Crimean Tatars, since the imperial period (Kuzio, “Crimea: Where Russia’s War Started and Where Ukraine Will Win,” July 8). Since the occupation of Crimea in 2014, the Crimean Tatars have witnessed restrictions of their own independent media, a decline in the number of Tatars attending schools, and violations of other rights (Ukrainska Pravda, August 9, 2022). The Crimean Tatars are not the only group subject to forced Russification, nor are they the only people deported by Stalin’s regime in the 1940s who continue to suffer mistreatment.

One such group whose suffering continues is the Ahiska (or Meskhetian) Turks. Originally settling lands of present-day Georgia when they were part of the Ottoman Empire, some 86,000 Ahiska were deported by Soviet leader Joseph Stalin in 1944 to Uzbekistan. The deportation on cattle trucks in the middle of a Soviet winter led to 17,000 deaths (Kavkazcenter.com, November 15, 2023). Remaining an “unforgiven people” even after Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev came to power in 1953, the Ahiska were forced out of the Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic by pogroms in 1989 and resettled across the Soviet Union, including in Russia and Ukraine. In the Krasnodar oblast of Russia, they suffered continued discrimination and were refused Russian citizenship . This meant that the only passports some had into the 2000s were Soviet passports. Worse, periodic attacks by Cossack paramilitaries who often seized goods and money continued the mistreatment of the Ahiska Turks (Arnold, Russian Nationalism and Ethnic Violence: Symbolic Violence, Lynching, Pogrom, and Massacre, 2016, Routledge). Between 2004 and 2006, the United States arranged for the resettlement of 10,000–13,000 Ahiska in America, many of whom have come to inhabit the area around Dayton, Ohio.

Following the beginning of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, more Ahiska have been coming to the United States in search of asylum and out of a desire to be near kin. The horrific treatment of the Ahiska by the Russian state has continued and while there were some asylum claims before 2022, that number increased greatly after (see EDM, November 27, 2013). I have worked as an expert witness in providing affidavits for asylum applications for the Ahiska and, in doing so, have interacted with those in Dayton. Those include not just Ahiska from Russia but also from Ukraine, as many lived in the areas currently occupied by Russia, including Kherson, Sloviansk, Zaporizhzhia, and Donetsk (see EDM, August 2, 2022). Discussions with individual applicants reveal patterns that demonstrate the continuing elements of Russia’s imperial identity.

The Ahiska continue to be targeted for recruitment by the military or involvement in other jobs on the front line that include enormous risk. I have consulted on cases involving several applicants who received military draft notices on the street in Rostov and other locations. Once sent to the front, ethnic minorities are often sent into the most dangerous areas of combat with little regard for their lives (see EDM, March 1, October 4, 2022, February 14, 2023, April 30). Being grist for the “meat grinder,” they are deployed to such places as Bakhmut and Chasiv Yar. This is reflected in the high death rates reported in Russian ethnic minority regions such as Bashkortostan and Buryatia (see EDM, February 27, April 4; Mediazona, May 11). The Ahiska are especially vulnerable to such recruitment practices as they have no eponymous oblast, krai, district, or even city (gorod’) to represent them. It is unknown how many have been recruited to the front, but the number is presumably high.

Similarly, although women were not in danger of being deployed to combat activities in Ukraine, some female asylum seekers have reported that they were nonetheless asked to participate in auxiliary activities close to the front. One applicant with medical training reported that she had been forced to work in Covid wards without personal protective equipment during the pandemic and had been told she would be deployed to the front to work in the hospitals there. This story was not an isolated case, and applicants told of people they knew in similar circumstances and being forced into dangerous positions. What the case of the Ahiska most vividly demonstrates, however, is the extent to which Russia’s war in Ukraine is being fought by non-Russian ethnic minorities.

All asylum applicants reported daily mistreatment and discrimination on account of their ethnicity and religion-violations of Russia’s obligations under the United Nations Charter. Some applicants reported manifest discrimination in schools, such as being downgraded on assignments simply because they were “not Russian” and not receiving medical treatment for the same reason. One applicant mentioned a practice of reiderstvo (рейдерство)—the seizure one’s property using force, bribery, or other means—on his successful city café, which was taken because city officials knew he was a vulnerable minority. Others discussed the fear they felt at interacting with Russian officials or even living in a house in Russia, having previously suffered abuse for continuing to live there. Apart from the moral dimensions of discriminating against people based on their religion or ethnicity, I wonder about the effect of such treatment on the morale of the people who are now being asked to fight Russia’s war (see EDM, November 13).

The case of the Ahiska Turks demonstrates continuity in Russia’s imperial mentality since the end of the Cold War. The Ahiska have continued to be a marginalized and discriminated minority who are now seeking asylum in the United States. The stories of mistreatment, repression, and attempts to co-opt the group into fighting Russia’s war in Ukraine exhibit some of the worst practices of colonial elites toward minorities. It is no surprise that it is finally in the United States where they have come to find an end to the persecution which has been a feature of Ahiska history for nearly the last century.