So that day has come... 21st of May... The Memorial Day for the exile of Caucasians from their homeland.

Today the day that marks 150 years from the end of the Russian-Caucasus war, that is 21st of May, which was a day of celebration for Tsarist Russia of victory in the Caucasus, is a day of remembrance for the people who died in this event of the 19th century.
The family histories, and records of official archives, say that people were put on ships. The ships were overloaded, and many sank on the way. Many people died of hunger and diseases on the ships and after arrival.  

The territories shown to exiled people were not suitable for settlement, many more died in the next months. The last couple of decades, the Remembrance Day, 21st of May, has been the most important event of all political-cultural organizations of the Diaspora. Before the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the memorial day was also a big event in Abkhazia.

Circassians experienced one of the greatest tragedies of humankind. Millions of people had to leave their homeland, and thousands of them died during the exodus. The tragedy of exile has always remained intact, being transmitted from one generation to the other. The despair of exile has given the entire Circassian diaspora dispersed around the whole world from Turkey to the USA a common identity. This is unique to a handful of classical diaspora communities. Circassians remember the tragedy of the 21st of May every year, and by doing that each time they confirm the sense of belonging to the Circassian community. The flowers thrown into the sea every year on the 21st of May is a way of easing the souls of those people who lost their lives during the exodus in one way or another. I am dreaming of a world free of involuntary and forced migrations. 

Towards the 150th Anniversary of the Caucasian Exile

The Russian-Caucasian War, which lasted for many decades, ended with wide scale forced deportation of the native peoples of the Caucasus, particularly the Circassians. The wars that resulted in the death of hundreds of thousands of Caucasians, is surprisingly not well-known enough among the world public opinion. The same lack of knowledge is also the case for the rich language and culture of Circassians, which are sadly now on the edge of extinction. Now the Circassians, who were settled mostly in Anatolia, and the Middle East and the Balkans after the tragic events of 1864, live along the peoples with whom they share a new destiny, and without exception, have been actively contributing to the social and political lives of the countries in which they live. Having said that Circassians, dispersed across the world from today’s Russian Federation to Turkey, and from the Middle East to Europe and the USA, unfortunately, did not, or could not make known the sad and almost forgotten history of the forced migration and the tragic human losses resulted from it. This people’s primary goals are to save their languages from extinction, to be known, and to be recognized in a race against time. Their struggle against times is becoming more interesting in the 21st century. While doing that they seem to be very well aware of the fact that these can be achieved not only through memorizing the sad stories of forced displacement of the 19th century, but also through constructing stronger cultural-political ties and communication-channels with the peoples with whom they are now living, the Turks, Russians and Arabs. The way to enable this is to devise amicable and democratic approaches without being hijacked by diaspora fanaticism and blind radicalism, and without allowing their consciousness to become dominated by a morbid psychology of mourning and retribution. The diaspora strategies the Circassians are improvising nowadays will succeed, as they also admit, so far as a firm subscription the politics of cosmopolitan citizenship and peaceful coexistence among the peoples of the region is assured. Strengthening the relations between the peoples of the region, particularly between Turkey and the Russian Federation, will further help developing a new awareness of pluralist citizenship without giving up the most humane demands of the Circassians for cultural-linguistic preservation and the recognition of what had happened in the 19th century. It is in this sense that the 21 May presents an opportunity to the peoples of the region not merely a date to commemorate, but also a new invitation for cosmopolitan citizenship, which hopefully all people of the region, including the Circassians, will benefit from and contribute to.