I have written some on the plight of the Meskhetian Turks here before. Of all the nationalities to suffer total deportation under Stalin they remain the furthest from repatriation. Most of the Russian-Germans have settled in Germany and almost half of the Crimean Tatars have returned to Crimea from Uzbekistan. Neither settlement in Turkey or return to Meskheti-Javakheti have been options for the vast majority of Meskhetian Turks now dispersed across Russia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan. Apparently, the Georgian government is now at long last moving in the direction of negotiations regarding the repatriation of the Meskhetian Turks. Georgian State Minister for Conflict Resolution Issues Giorgi Khaindrava is currently on a tour of the CIS to discuss issues relating to repatriation of the Meskhetian Turks. You can find more information at this site here. Thanks to Ara Sanjian for bringing this to my attention.
The story on Khaindrava inspired me to look for more news coverage of the Meskhetian Turks. In US domestic news there have been at least three stories in the last three days on the settlement of Meskhetian Turks in the US from Krasnodar Krai. These newspaper articles have appeared in the Scranton Times-Tribune, The Cleveland Plain Dealer, and The Laconia Citizen in New Hampshire. All of these articles can be found online, but the very long urls are beyond my technical ability to paste here as links.
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