These days everything is different.
ІІ. Bugün, or Today
From Meskheti, the Soviet government deported the Meskhetian Turks to Central Asia, largely to Uzbekistan.
“We lived in Samarqand. It was the first capital of Uzbekistan.” Jasim talks as he breaks ekmek, Turkish flatbread. “I had a good job: I worked in a factory. Our lives were very peaceful. I don’t know what happened.”
What happened in May of 1989 is known as the Ferghana Pogroms. An ordinary quarrel at the bazaar grew into an interethnic conflict. If you were to ask around about the underlying causes of the tragedy, very few would be able to explain much of anything.
“We share one religion, we share one faith,” Jasim reflects aloud. “In Islam there are Sunnis and Shi’ites. We’re Sunni. And Uzbekistan is also 95–96 percent Sunni. There were no disagreements over language. Moscow had given the directive to cultivate the chornozem, the fertile black soil. The Ferghana Valley was the most densely populated region in Central Asia. Maybe we should have booted out the nonessentials. But we’re peaceful and hard-working people: We quietly worked and minded our own business. I don’t know.”
The story goes that some Turk was rude to an Uzbek saleswoman at the bazaar and knocked over a crate of her strawberries, some other men jumped to her defense, and a fight broke out.
“In the seventies or early eighties, they honestly could’ve stabbed someone to death and gotten away with it, but here they had a fist fight and the whole thing got blown up into an international fallout,” the community elder recalls.
In an article for the news portal Krym.Realiyi, Gulnara Bekirova writes that the events of May 1989 were preceded by rallies in Tashkent in December 1988, marked by calls of “Russians, back to your Russia; Crimean Tatars, back to Crimea.” Perhaps hatred toward resettlers expanded to include the Meskhetian Turks too: “…the agitation didn’t abate; conversations circled among young Uzbeks that the Turks needed to be ‘given a good lesson.’”
On May 23 violence broke out in the streets of Quvasoy, with several hundred people involved on each side. The crowd tried to force its way into the neighborhoods of the Meskhetian Turks and other ethnic minorities to launch a pogrom. Over three hundred police officers were needed to quell the riot. Fifty-eight individuals were injured; of them thirty-three were hospitalized.
Rumors were flying in the region that the Meskhetian Turks allegedly beat up Uzbeks, rape their women, and torture their children. In the morning of June 3, a group of Uzbeks raided the Turkish neighborhoods in Toshloq. They set houses on fire and assaulted residents. The following day houses were burning not only in Ferghana and Toshloq, but also in Margilan and other settlements where Meskhetian Turks lived.
“People started showing up in Samarqand and threatening us: ‘Either you leave, or we’ll do the same thing to you as happened in Ferghana,’” Jasim recalls, his voice even. “I remember the moment that we understood our life there was over. So we left in search of a new home.”
Even though the head of the family narrates all of this with detachment, the young women struggle to remain unemotional and leave the room.
That’s when men from different families got together in groups and traveled from region to region in search of a new place to live, hoping that elsewhere someone would welcome them.
“Eight of us set out,” Jasim says, remembering the events from twenty-eight years ago. “First we had to find a place where our families wouldn’t suffer. It was June. We were told that there were houses available in the Stavropol region of Russia. But when we arrived there, they didn’t let us in. Next we headed to the town of Prokhladny. It was right when the Adler train had started running through all of Kazakhstan. Through Kalmykia, through Dagestan, we traveled to Grozne, to Bielorechensk. We took a look—not bad, but we weren’t used to those kinds of conditions. Heavy June rains, dirt everywhere, sludge beneath our feet—how could we live there? So we headed back. On the Baku-Krasnovodsk ferry we met a family traveling to Turkmenistan for medical treatment. The husband says to us, ‘There are a lot of collective farms in our area, you can come and have a look. I’ll be home in fifteen days.’ He gave us his phone number. He says, ‘Let’s agree that I’ll meet you at the station. Give me a call tomorrow.’”
ІІІ. Yarın, or Tomorrow
The man turned out to be the mayor of the village of Vasiukivka in the Donetsk region, which was still Soviet at the time.
“He met us at the train station and showed us around the collective farm,” Jasim continues his story. “He showed us the houses that stood empty. We liked it here, and we decided to move.”
Eight men made the decision to relocate their families here to Vasiukivka. For over four days they traveled by train, through Volgograd and Artemivsk (today’s Bakhmut)—with their children, their belongings, their emotions.
“It was difficult,” the man admits. “They supposedly gave each family 10,000 rubles of government assistance. But the Soviet Union was collapsing, the currency was depreciating. I was given a check, but there was no cash to be had! The Soviet money had expired. I had just finished building a house in Uzbekistan. I didn’t even get to live a month in it. Not even a month! I had spent my entire life building it…”
At that time, in 1989, almost all the Meskhetian Turks left Uzbekistan. Some 90,000 of them moved to Russia, over 30,000 left for America, and around 10,000 moved to Ukraine. Here in Ukraine they settled in the Henichesk, Chaplynka, and Kalanchak Districts in the Kherson region, as well as in Poltava, Bila Tserkva, and Kharkiv. In the Donetsk region they primarily live in the settlements and villages belonging to the Vasiukivka Village Council, where 440 of a total 690 residents are Meskhetian Turks.
“Between 1989 and 2004 many Meskhetian Turks were denied residency permits, so they lived without them, without any rights. But we were genuinely welcomed in Ukraine. Not a single time were we told, ‘You’re a Turk, but I’m a Ukrainian.’ The people of Ukraine helped us with everything!” Jasim says loudly and confidently.
Initially, most of the resettlers worked at one of the two collective farms in the area, Lenin’s Banner and the farm named after Illich. But in 2001 the collective farms were liquidated, and people took to small-scale gardening. There’s a greenhouse today in almost every yard.
“We love working the land,” Jasim’s son Akif says, and the women nod in agreement. “Earlier, the locals here barely planted anything other than potatoes, corn, and pumpkins. Because nothing else grew. ‘Why?’ we asked. ‘It doesn’t sprout,’ they’d reply.”
“But for us everything sprouts,” Akif’s wife Gulmira chimes in. “Everything grows for us: bell peppers, eggplants, tomatoes, carrots. We could gather two harvests in one season. We’re creating order, making our own jobs.”
If you stop by the farmers’ market in Bakhmut, everyone will tell you that the vegetables grown by the Meskhetian Turks are the best. That’s the mark of quality.
“No one oppresses us here,” Jasim says about life in Vasiukivka. “We had our own folk band, we’d get financial subsidies… If there are ten representatives in the village council, three or four of them are always ours. The only thing is that we have problems with water now. In the past there was a well in every yard. But now the water’s salty.”
There are salt mines outside Vasiukivka, and because the mines are being developed in the direction of the village, the water in the wells really has become salty. This problem is stressed to us in many a house.
Jasim sits in the room surrounded by his wife, their twenty-nine-year-old son Akif, and his grandchildren, ten-year-old Lachin and three-year-old Yusuf. An eight-month-old girl, Orzugul, babbles in his daughter-in-law’s lap. The house is encircled by a well-tended yard, neatly laid-out paths, and young fir