Meskhetian Turks, also referred to as Turkish Meskhetians, Ahiska Turks, and Turkish Ahiskans, are a subgroup of ethnic Turkish people formerly inhabiting the Meskheti region of Georgia, along the border with Turkey. The Turkish presence in Meskheti began with the Turkish military expedition of 1578, although Turkic tribes had settled in the region as early as the eleventh and twelfth centuries.
Balkars are a Turkic ethnic group in the Caucasus region, one of the titular populations of Kabardino-Balkaria.
Kochari is a folk dance originating in the Armenian Highlands. It is performed today by Armenians, while variants are performed by Assyrians, Azerbaijanis, Kurds, and Pontic Greeks. It is a form of circle dance.
Pontic Greek also known as Pontic is an endangered variety of Modern Greek indigenous to the Pontus region on the southern shores of the Black Sea, northeastern Anatolia, and the Eastern Turkish/Caucasus region. Today it is spoken mainly in northern Greece. Its speakers are referred to as Pontic Greeks or Pontian Greeks. It is not completely mutually intelligible with modern Demotic Greek.
The Pontic Greeks, also Pontian Greeks or simply Pontians, are an ethnically Greek group indigenous to the region of Pontus, in northeastern Anatolia. Many later migrated in various waves between the Ottoman conquest of the Empire of Trebizond in 1461 and the Russo-Turkish War of 1828–1829. Common migratory destinations included other parts of Eastern Anatolia, the former Russian province of Kars Oblast in the Transcaucasus, and the country of Georgia.
The peoples of the Caucasus, or Caucasians, are a diverse group comprising more than 50 ethnic groups throughout the Caucasus.
Kurdistan uezd, also known colloquially as Red Kurdistan, was a Soviet administrative unit that existed for six years from 1923 to 1929 and included the districts of Kalbajar, Lachin, Qubadli and part of Jabrayil. It was part of Azerbaijan SSR, with the administrative center being in Lachin. It was briefly succeeded by the Kurdistan Okrug from 30 May to 23 July 1930.
The Greeks in Armenia, like the other groups of Caucasus Greeks such as the Greeks in Georgia, are mainly descendants of the Pontic Greeks, who originally lived along the shores of the Black Sea, in the uplands of the Pontic Alps, and other parts of northeastern Anatolia. In their original homelands these Greek communities are called Pontic Greeks and Eastern Anatolia Greeks respectively. Seafaring Ionian Greeks settled around the southern shores of the Black Sea starting around 800 BC, later expanding to coastal regions of modern Romania, Russia, Bulgaria and Ukraine. The Pontic Greeks lived for thousands of years almost isolated from the Greek peninsula, retaining elements of the Ancient Greek language and making Pontic Greek unintelligible to most other modern Hellenic languages. They were joined in the region by later waves of Greeks in the Hellenistic, Roman, and Byzantine period, ranging from traders, scholars, churchmen, mercenaries, or refugees from elsewhere in Anatolia or the southern Balkans.
The population of Armenia includes various significant minority ethnic groups.
The Greeks in Georgia, which in academic circles is often considered part of the broader, historic community of Pontic Greeks or—more specifically in this region—Caucasus Greeks, is estimated at between 15,000 and 20,000 people to 100,000 down from about 100,000 in 1989. The community has dwindled due to the large wave of repatriation to Greece as well as emigration to Russia, and in particular Stavropol Krai in the North Caucasus region of southern Russia. The community has established the Union of Greeks in Georgia and there is a Cultural Centre and a newspaper entitled Greek Diaspora.
Greeks have been present in what is now southern Russia from the 6th century BC; those settlers assimilated into the indigenous populations. The vast majority of contemporary Russia's Greek minority populations are descendants of Medieval Greek refugees, traders, and immigrants from the Byzantine Empire, the Ottoman Balkans, and Pontic Greeks from the Empire of Trebizond and Eastern Anatolia who settled mainly in southern Russia and the South Caucasus in several waves between the mid-15th century and the second Russo-Turkish War of 1828–29. As during the Genocide of the Pontic Greeks, the survivors fled to the Upper Pontus.
The Greeks in Kyrgyzstan form one of the country's smaller minority groups. The existing data are contradictory. According to 2009 Census there are 451 Greeks. According to the Greek Ministry of Foreign Affairs, there are 150 families of Greek origin. However, the data of the General Secretariat For Greeks Abroad give an even lower number.
Islam in Georgia was introduced in 654 when an army sent by the Third Caliph of Islam, Uthman, conquered Eastern Georgia and established Muslim rule in Tbilisi. Currently, Muslims constitute approximately 9.9% of the Georgian population. According to other sources, Muslims constitute 10-11% of Georgia's population.
Turks in Uzbekistan are ethnic Turks who live in Uzbekistan.
Balkar and Karachay nationalism is the national sentiment among the Balkars and Karachai. It generally manifests itself in:
Armenians in Central Asian states: Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan, were mainly settled there during the Soviet era for various reasons.
The Greeks in Azerbaijan have not formed a large community in comparison to those in neighbouring Georgia and Armenia. It was composed mainly of Pontic Greek immigrants from the Ottoman Empire.
The Kurds in Kazakhstan,, form a part of the historically significant Kurdish population in the post-Soviet space, and encompass people born in or residing in Kazakhstan who are of Kurdish origin. According to the most recent Kazakh census in 2011, the Kurdish population is 38,325 or 0.2% of the population, but Vice President of the Kurdish Association of Kazakhstan, Malikshah Gasanov numbers the population up to 46,000, because many Kurds list themselves as Turks and Azeris. Other sources predict this number to be higher, counting up to 60,000 Kurds in Kazakhstan. During the Soviet era, most of the Kurdish population in the Kazakh SSR were deported there by Joseph Stalin from the Armenian, Azerbaijan and Georgian Soviet republics. Years later, Kurds immigrated to Kazakhstan from the neighbouring countries, Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan.
The Caucasus Greeks, also known as the Greeks of Transcaucasia and Russian Asia Minor, are the ethnic Greeks of the North Caucasus and Transcaucasia in what is now southwestern Russia, Georgia, and northeastern Turkey. These specifically include the Pontic Greeks, though they today span a much wider region including the Russian north Caucasus, and the former Russian Caucasus provinces of Batum Oblast' and Kars Oblast', now in north-eastern Turkey and Adjara in Georgia.
The deportation of the Soviet Greeks was a series of forced transfers of Greeks of the Soviet Union that was ordered by Soviet leader Joseph Stalin and carried out by the NKVD and the MVD in 1942, 1944 and 1949. It affected mostly Pontic Greeks along the Black Sea coast, most notably from Krasnodar Krai from where they were deported in all three deportations, resulting in ethnic cleansing of this area. The deported Soviet and foreign Greeks residing along the coast of Crimea and the Caucasus were resettled in cattle trains to the modern Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, while their property, which was left behind, was confiscated. After de-Stalinization in the 1950s, some Greeks returned to their original homes, but most chose to emigrate to Greece, marking the end of the centuries long Greek community along the Black Sea coast. It is estimated that around 70,000 to 80,000 Greeks were uprooted in these three waves of deportations. At least 15,000 Greeks had died by the end of the deportations. Some scholars characterize the deportation as a genocide against Greeks.
