 Prayer Requests
Pray the Meskhetian Turks of Central Asia would find the true Prince of Peace who can bring them the peace that they have sought for so long.
Pray for the Turks who have resettled in America, that believers across the nation would reach out to these lost souls and live out their faith as they welcome the Turks into their communities. |
The Meskhetian Turks of Central Asia
27 Jun 2006
The term Meskhetian Turks refers to a group of ethnic Turks who have faced a long history of discrimination and displacement. The traditional homeland of these Turks is in the mountaneous regions of the Republic of Georgia. As Russia became a communist nation, Georgia became part of the new USSR, effectively shaping the Turks' cultural identity with a mix of cultures and traditions: Turkish language and Islamic beliefs within an atheistic Soviet society, and both rural and urban life.
In 1944, Stalin forcibly removed the entire Meskhetian Turk population, most of which resettled in Uzbekistan. As the second generation was beginning to rebuild their lives in Uzbekistan, a large pogrom (a term referring to organized violence against a defenseless community) began in 1989, further forcing these people to seek refuge in Azerbaijan and the area surrounding Krasnodar, Russia.
With the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Turks were left with no ties to any country. Most of the former Soviet republics refused to grant citizenship to these Turks, which accounts for why so many Meskhetian Turks today still carry passports from the Soviet Union. Xenophobic tensions have been escalating recently in Krasnodar against the Turks, leading to the United States officially granting refugee status to these Turks in 2005 under the US Refugee Program. Today, thousands of refugees have now been resettled in America where they are trying to rebuild their shattered lives once again. |
