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Homeland‐Making among Cultural and Ethnic Kin: Ahıska Turks in Turkey
Author(s) -
Dogan Hulya
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
studies in ethnicity and nationalism
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.204
H-Index - 8
eISSN - 1754-9469
pISSN - 1473-8481
DOI - 10.1111/sena.12318
Subject(s) - homeland , persecution , ethnic group , politics , meaning (existential) , state (computer science) , population , gender studies , ethnic community , political science , ethnology , geography , sociology , criminology , law , demography , psychology , algorithm , computer science , psychotherapist
Ahıska Turks are a dispersed community without a nation‐state and, similar to other ethnic minorities of the former Soviet Union, their political powerlessness rendered them subject to persecution under Stalinist rule. Most of the Ahıska Turks interviewed for this study identify themselves both ethnically and nationally with Turkey, but their cultural geographic focus lies in present‐day Georgia. By incorporating qualitative data collected through fieldwork in Turkey, this article investigates where home is for this group by asking whether Georgia still holds any meaning as homeland, or whether the location of the ‘homeland’ is shifting as the population resettles in Turkey.