Abstract
More than in the previous years, in 2019 the organisations and the social media groups of the Turkish citizens who are fully or partly descendants of Caucasian refugees looked active not only around 21 May, their “genocide commemoration” day, but also around 2 May, remembering the 2 May 1923, when the Kemalist government deported Eastwards many Circassian villages located in Western Anatolia. In sum, we are witnessing that now the “Circassians of Turkey” (a term which generally includes North-Eastern Caucasians like Chechens and South-Eastern Caucasians like Abkhazians) are struggling not only for a worldwide recognition of the “Circassian genocide”, but also for an open debate on what has meant and means being “Circassian” in the Republic. This paper tries to draw an updated picture of what is up within Circassian intelligencija and what Caucasians of Turkish nationality are aiming at.
Highlights
This contribution is an ideal sequel of my book about the Circassian ordeal (Grassi 2014, 2017, 2018)
On 2 May 1923, eight months after the successful military conclusion of the Independence War, the Kemalist government deported Eastwards many Circassian villages located in Western Anatolia
The communities of these villages were accused to have collaborated with the Greek occupants, because they had been in contact with the most famous and ill-famed guerrilla leader of the war, Ethem the Circassian
Summary
This contribution is an ideal sequel of my book about the Circassian ordeal (Grassi 2014, 2017, 2018). The 21st of May is the day when the Circassians of Turkish nationality, who are the greatest Circassian community in the World and form the ‘golden share’ of the Caucasian diaspora in Turkey, mobilize and publicly commemorate the extermination and expulsion their ancestors suffered in 1862-4 due to the expansionist policy of the Tsarist Empire. On 2 May 1923, eight months after the successful military conclusion of the Independence War, the Kemalist government deported Eastwards many Circassian villages located in Western Anatolia The communities of these villages were accused to have collaborated with the Greek occupants, because they had been in contact with the most famous and ill-famed guerrilla leader of the war, Ethem the Circassian.. In Ankara he had realized that the leading pashas had far different ideas, so at the end he rebelled against Mustafa Kemal’s superior authority and escaped to the Greek-occupied area, living in exile the rest of his life (Grassi 2020, 197, 206, 211, 214) He is the only famous personality of contemporary Turkey whose nickname is directly associated to a non-Turkish community and at the same time the villain par excellence in the official history of Contemporary Turkey. Turkish revisionist historiography, just like the Western, looks as much ideologically biased as the Turkish official nationalist historiography, with – as far as I know – one bright exception: Fikret Adanır (Grassi 2019, 157-67)
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