KAFKASLAR’DA “TÜRKİ” KAVIMLER: ÇERKEZLER, ABHAZLAR, KABARTAYLAR, ADIGELER, ÇEÇENLER, İNGUŞLAR, DAĞISTANLILAR VE DIĞERLERI

After the disintegration of USSR Yugoslavia, a lot of ethnic peoples have participated in international area and each group sought some regional or global support for their political aims. Depending upon these support and obstacles a new supra-national identity had been defined or redefined. In the modern meaning of a national identity as a nation-state founder, the real origins of the founder people may likely not have same ethnical root. Instead of that, believing in the near fate, waiting for the same future, sharing of the same common past memories may generally be powerful factor of a new state formation. As observed in many identity formation process, the higher the internal tensions in any society and the weaker the social and political bonds that tie it together, the greater the need for a threatening outside enemy who equally menaces all elements of “our” group and therefore makes it necessary to submerge internal differences for common survival. At the end of this process, while the “our” needs authentic or imaginary wider supporting elements, domestic solidarity of the group gets more intense. The English term “Turkic” is by the 1990’s mainly used to describe the peoples and languages of whole area out of the Turkey. While the “Turkish” is commonly seen as referring to the language and peoples of today’s modern Turkey. Some of the ethnically and culturally particularly close peoples and ethnic minorities in surrounding countries are also accepted with “Turkish” adjective. Many Turkish researchers feel that this is an artificial distinction and claim that “the Turkic languages” do not make themselves this distinction. For the Caucasus, after capturing of Sheikh Shamil by Czarist armies, millions of peoples of Circassians, Abhazians, Daghestanis, Chechens, Adiges and others immigrated to Turkey for decades thus today in Turkey more Circassians, Dagistanians, Adiges, Abhazians live in Turkey than those live in autonomous republics of Russian Federation in North Caucasus. As one knows, these Caucasian peoples as Muslims non-Turk groups of Balkans, are Muslim but not Turks. In this article, to meet another need of an identity that has been in evidence in in the Caucasus, I found “Turkic” as a useful adjective.