Abstract
The article considers the issue of ethnogenesis and the history of the emergence of Ahiska Turks in Kazakhstan based on documentary sources and memories.The authors emphasize that the Turks represented in the Russian and Georgian studies as «Meskhetians» or «Meskhetian Turks» are part of the descendants of the Ahiska Pashalyk Turks.In the article, the authors note that the Ahiska Turks are descendants of the Huns, even descended before the Huns from the ancient Proto-Türks, who migrated in the 2nd century to the north of the Caucasus from Central Asia.The article also discusses the history of their deportation to Kazakhstan in the 1940 s.Before being expelled, the Turks were offered to register as Georgians or Azerbaijanis.Among them some people signed registered themselves as Georgian, Azerbaijani or Turkmen in order to save their family and offspring.But, as Georgian researchers note, the brave people showed resistance.Despite the repression, the Ahiska Turks were able to preserve their originality, loyalty and nobility.After rehabilitation in 1956, many special settlers returned to the Caucasus.After the collapse of the USSR, most of the deportees returned to their historic homeland.Only Ahiska-Turks were not destined to return to their ancestral lands.Georgia did not accept them, and Turkey is not their historic homeland.Thus, Kazakhstan became the second small Homelandfor them.At the present time about 200 thousand Ahiska-Turkslive in Kazakhstan.In addition to them, it is believed that out of 115,000 Azerbaijanis, 80 percent can be Turks.Two siblings live in one family: one of them is recorded as Azerbaijani, and the second is Turk.Thus, historical justice is gradually restored in relation to those Turks who had to become representatives of other ethnic groups.The unity of the Turks in Kazakhstan is manifested in the preservation of their ethnic language, original culture and national tradition.