ქართველები თურქეთის მარმარილოს ზღვის რეგიონში (განსახლების არეალი)

Abstract

Many Georgians live in the Republic of Turkey. They live not only in the historical territory of Georgia – Tao-Klarjeti, but in other places as well. One of the areas of their compact settlement is the Marmara Sea region. Considerable number of ethnic Georgians live in ılçe/districts of Bursa, Sakarya and Kocaeli vilayets. For example, the informants from Bursa province name about 70 Georgian villages there. Overall, the Muhajir Georgians had 125 villages in the above-mentioned region of Turkey, where they still live today. The present paper specifically discusses the villages with the Georgian population. The migration of ethnic Georgians in the Marmara Sea region mainly took place during three years after the end of the Russo-Turkish War of 1877- 1878. Russia forced Ottomans to cede the historical territories of southern Georgia. The main reason for the resettlement of Muslim Georgians from their ancestral lands was the incompatibility of Muslim Georgians and Christian Russians and the rumors spread by Muslim religious leaders as though Christian Russians were going to kill them. Deportation of Muslim Georgians from their own territories was in the interests of both Russians and Ottomans. The reason for the deportation was also the conflict with ethnic Armenians. The process of deportation was promoted by harsh demographic situation in the historicalethnographic areas inhabited by the Georgian Muslims, overpopulation and the land crisis were among it. The Georgian Muslims were exiled mostly from the following historical-ethnographic regions of South Georgia: Adjara-Kobuleti, Shavshet-Imerkhevi, and Klarjet-Ligani. The authorities of the Ottoman Empire initially offered the Muslim Georgians lands in the coastal zone, but for the migrants from mountainous and forested areas this climate and ecological environment were unacceptable; they had adaptation problems in a new geographical environment. Therefore the Georgian Muhajirs chose mountainous and forested places near the sea and started to settle there. The migration of Muslim Georgians to the Marmara Sea region does not include only three-year period after the end of the Russian-Turkish War of 1877-1878, when it had a massive occurrence. Individual migrations of the Georgians also took place after that as well, including the Soviet period until the barbed wire fences were installed on the Soviet-Turkish border. A large number of the Georgians moved to the Marmara Sea region in 1923, 1931, 1939, 1941 and 1942 is considered as the final stage of this process. As the same informants correctly point “Muhajirs left their places, they did not escape”. But they refer to migration of the 1920s-1930s as “a runaway”. And at this time they escaped from the Soviet government.