Paul
Goble
Staunton, December 14 – Two new
reports suggest the Circassian language is now at risk of extinction in the
coming decades and the North Caucasian nation of those who speak it has entered
into a period of demographic decline and could also disappear in the future,
prompting their supporters to consider new defenses.
UNESCO has identified Circassian as
one of the languages in the North Caucasus at risk of “completely disappearing
in the next few decades” given the already low number of people who speak it in
that region, the division of the community, and the absence of the use of Circassian
in schools and other public spaces (caucasustimes.com/article.asp?id=21525).
Activists in Adygeya have called on
the republic’s leaders to adopt a special law to preserve the Circassian
language. Such a law would reverse a
2007 measure that ended the obligatory study of the language in republic
schools. That measure by itself would not necessarily help the far larger
number of Circassians living in Turkey and the Middle East.
The Circassians in Turkey are
urbanizing and assimilating; those in the Middle East except in Israel are
doing the same. As a result, they are rapidly ceasing to speak their native
language and thus may cease to identify with the nation that has spoken it for
centuries. Adding to the language’s problems are fights over alphabets.
Most in Turkey favor the Latin
script while officials in the North Caucasus favor Cyrillic. The Russian
Cyrillic is inadequate for the sound system of Circassian, but most textbooks
now available are in Cyrillic; and the Turkish government has done very little
to develop educational materials in Circassian in the Latin script.
One Georgian expert on the Circasssian
language says that there is a way out of this difficult situation in which the
Circassian language now finds itself: repatriation to a united homeland in the
North Caucasus, something Moscow opposes, and intensified study of Circassian
by all, “on the model of the Israeli diaspora.”
A
second report notes that the Circassians, “once one of the largest
peoples of the North Caucasus” no longer have that status but instead are
divided internally and between the small population in the homeland and a much larger
diaspora abroad (onkavkaz.com/news/1405-krest-cherkesskoi-demografii-v-chem-prichina-ugasanija-odnogo-iz-samyh-muzhestvennyh-narodov-ka.html).
According to Anzor
Daur, a Circassian activist, “the Circassians today are in a deep demographic
crisis connected with a sharp fall in fertility and thus a lowering of the
share of Circassians in the general population of the North Caucasus.”
In 1986,
there were more than 17 births for every 1000 Circassians and fewer than 11
deaths. By 2000, the number of deaths per 1,000 had risen to more than 15 while
the number of births had fallen to nine.
In the years since, he suggests, the situation has not fundamentally
charged for the better.
Daur
spoke with two activists about the current crisis. Adam Bogus of the Adygeya
Adyge Khase group, said that in his republic, the number of deaths among
Circassians now exceeds the number of births by 700 to 900 each year and that
most marriages break down before producing a replacement level of children.
The
Circassian situation is much worse than that of other North Caucasian peoples,
he said. On the one hand, they are divided and half fewer hopes for the future;
and on the other, they have higher aspirations for their children and are less
affected by Islam and consequently increasingly choose to have fewer children.
And asker
Sokh said that the demographic crisis has hit the Circassians hardest in the
Russian North Caucasus, less in Turkey, and hardly at all in Jordan and Syria
where Circassian families have three or four children. He said he was
especially concerned by rising levels of mortality among the North Caucasus
Circassians, the result of alcoholism among older people.
Many had
expected that the recovery of Islam after Soviet times would contribute to a
boost in the birthrate among Circassians, he continued; but young Circassians
have been much less affected by Muslim precepts than have their counterparts in
other non-Russian groups in the North Caucasus.
In the
hopes of reversing these trends, Circassians have pressed for uniting their
territories into a single republic and for allowing their co-nationals to
return to their homeland. Moscow opposes both as it does expanded education in
Circassian in Adygeya and other Circassian republics.
But that
has not stopped Circassian activists from searching for means of salvation, and
two interesting developments surfaced this week. First of all, the Adygey
language has now become a participant in the international language-learning
program Book2 (natpressru.info/index.php?newsid=8349).
That
program allows Circassians and others as well to study Circassian in any of the
49 other languages in this program, including English, Turkish, Arabic and
Russian. (The Natpress portal provides links to these programs for those who
would like to begin.) The Circassian program was developed in the North
Caucasus and is directed at the diaspora population.
A
second development may prove even more interesting. At the end of last month,
the Circassians of Iraq joined with the Chechens and Daghestanis there to form
a common organization, Caucasus, to press the authorities to address their
concerns much as Christians did earlier (al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2016/12/caucasus-circassians-chechens-dagestanis-iraq.html).
The group has
already called for a special law on their status. What makes this intriguing is that the
Circassians of Iraq who are outnumbered by both the Chechens and Daghestanis –
the three groups as a whole total about 15,000 -- are seeking to use the larger
numbers of the others to leverage their position with the state.
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