Paul
Goble
Staunton, February 25 – The new
round of tensions between Ankara and Moscow has give the Circassians of Turkey an
opening to request that the Turkish parliament recognize as an act of genocide the
policies of the tsarist Russian government against their ancestors, something
it is more likely to do now than in the past.
The Circassian Federation of Turkey
has handed in to the Turkish parliament a 21-page document documenting the crimes
against humanity committed by the tsarist authorities in the hopes of securing
Ankara’s official recognition of those actions as a genocide (capost.media/news/politika/federatsiya-cherkesskikh-organizatsiy-turtsii-trebuet-priznat-genotsid-cherkesov-/
and natpressru.info/index.php?newsid=11920).
At
a time when tensions between the two countries are high, it is more likely that
the Turkish parliamentarians will look with favor on this request than they
might have when the Erdogan government was seeking to promote closer ties with
Moscow.
Meanwhile,
the Coordinating Council of the Circassians of the Kabardino-Balkaria Republic
have sent a telegram to Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov demanding that he
recall Aleksey Yerkhov, the Russian ambassador in Ankara, for his offensive
statements about the Circassians in the past and present (zapravakbr.ru/index.php/30-uncategorised/1422-cherkesskie-obshchestvennye-ob-edineniya-trebuyut-otozvat-posla-rossii-v-turtsii-alekseya-erkhova).
Yerkhov sparked a controversy last
week when he suggested that any Circassians who left the Caucasus in 1864 did
so voluntarily and that they had every right to remain if they wanted to. That offended all Circassians, and they are
still furious despite his subsequent apology (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2020/02/russian-diplomats-suggestion-that.html).
The Circassians of KBR undoubtedly
have concluded that they have a better chance to achieving their goal for the
same reason that the Circassians in Turkey have.
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