Dagestanis in Turkey Retain Ethnic and Local Identities but have Close Ties with Circassians and Turks, Krishtopa Says

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Dec. 5 – Members of the various nations of Dagestan who came to Turkey at the end of the 19th century have retained their ethno-linguistic and local self-identifications but they have also developed close ties with the Circassians, the most numerous Muslim emigration from Russia, and with the Turks, according to Dmitry Krishtopa
    The Dagestani orientalist says that there are an estimated 100 to 150,000 Dagestanis now in Turkey, most descendants from the emigration of the late 19th century but some from a new emigration in the 1990s, that many have assimilated but even those retain their historical identities (kavkazr.com/a/potomki-dagestanskih-muhadzhirov-v-turtsii/33227600.html).
    They use Cyrillic, Latin and Arabic scripts depending on whom they want to be able to communicate with, live sometimes separately and sometimes together with other emigrations, and now have ties with their co-nationals in Dagestan itself, ties that were never completely broken even during Soviet times, Krishtopa continues.
    His words build on earlier research that was often limited by Turkish reluctance to talk about ethnic subdivisions within the Turkish nation. For background, see M.. Magomedkhanov, “Dagestanskaya diaspora v Osmanskoy imperii i Turtsii,” Istoriya, Etnografiya i Arkhaeologiya, 2 (2013) at cyberleninka.ru/article/n/dagestanskaya-diaspora-v-osmanskoy-imperii-i-turtsii.
For background on Muslim emigrations from Russia to Turkey more generally, see International Crisis Group, “Russian-Origin Muslims in Turkey,” at crisisgroup.org/global/russian-origin-muslims-turkey; Lowell Bezanis, “Soviet Muslim Emigres in the Republic of Turkey,” Central Asian Survey 13 (1994), and Egbert Wessenlink, The North Caucasian Diaspora in Turkey (1996) at refworld.org/docid/3ae6a6bc8.html).