Ingush Diaspora in Turkey Increasingly Active and Building Links to the Homeland

Paul Goble

            Staunton, August 13 – Ever more groups in the Russian Federation, both non-Russian nations and regionalist groups, and their co-ethnics or co-regionalists abroad are reaching out to each other, having seen the role Baltic diasporas played 30 years ago and the one Circassians abroad are playing now.

            Some of these diasporas took shape more than a century ago; others are a product of the departure of people from the USSR during World War II or from the Russian Federation since 1991 (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2019/02/ever-more-non-russian-groups-from.html,

windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2020/04/urals-emigration-takes-shape-alongside.html and windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2020/06/cossacks-need-diaspora-to-achieve-their.html).

            The Ingush in the homeland and the 70,000 Ingush in Turkey increasingly are reaching out to each other, with those in the North Caucasus viewing those in Turkey as political allies and those in Turkey viewing those in Turkey as the basic support for their identity, language and culture.

            In an article for the Ingushetia newspaper in Magas, journalist Nikolay Polevoy says that the core of the Ingush diaspora in Turkey was formed at the end  of the Caucasus war when the Circassians and representatives of some other groups, including Chechens and Ingush, were expelled or fled to the Ottoman Empire (gazetaingush.ru/obshchestvo/razvitie-ekonomicheskih-i-sociokulturnyh-svyazey-s-respublikoy-ingushetiya).

            The largest Ingush communities in Turkey now are in Karabulak and Nazran, but there are significant Ingush groups in 152 cities and towns. Those over 50 almost universally speak Ingush, and even among those between 25 and 50, 75 percent do, according to a survey conducted in 2017.

            Under Ataturk, the Ingush language was banned, and Ingush were renamed to conform to Turkish standards. But in recent decades, many Ingush in Turkey have resumed using their national names and seek to promote their language often by marrying Ingush from the Republic of Ingushetia.

            The group formed its own national organization in 2014 and opened an Ingush Center in Istanbul. Its head is Salman Akhriyev (Beshtoy). The organization is integrating recent arrivals from Ingushetia into the older community and reaching out to develop relations with the Ingush in Ingushetia.

            Significantly, the Ingush have not assimilated to Turks or to the much larger Chechen diaspora in Turkey. Instead, its members see themselves as the representatives of Ingushetia in the broader world and are doing what they can to promote ties with their national republic in the North Caucasus.

            Meanwhile, a Russian court has doubled the sentence from four months to eight months in a normal regime camp for Ramazan Gagiyev. He has been found guilty not only of attacking a policeman during the March 2019 protests, an action he acknowledges, but of doing so for political reasons, something he doesn’t (kavkaz-uzel.eu/articles/353017/).

            His lawyer says Gagiyev will appeal the decision.