 Hamidiye cavalry at Varto (1901) – Both Chechens and Kurds joined the cavalry. | |
| Regions with significant populations | |
|---|---|
| Following villages in Varto district:[1][2][3] Bağiçi (Çaharbur) Kayalık (Zirinik) Tepeköy (Tepe) Tescilsiz (Doğdap) Ulusırt (Aynan) Aydıngün (Şaşkan), Çöğürlü (Arinç) and Kıyıbaşı villages in Muş district[4] Kızıltepe[4][5] Saidsadiq District[6] | |
| Languages | |
| Kurdish (as mother tongue),[2]Turkish,Chechen[2] | |
| Religion | |
| Hanafi[3] andShafi‘i Islam[2] |
Chechen Kurds orKurdified Chechens are ethnicChechens who went through a process ofKurdification[6][7] after fleeing toKurdistan during and after theRussian conquest of the Caucasus in the 1860s. Today, these Chechens are perceived as being of the "Chechen tribe" and "Lezgî tribe".[2]
Chechen families were first settled in other regions of theOttoman Empire like theBalkans, but were since moved to Kurdistan by theSublime Porte.[8] The Ottomans planted Chechen refugees in Kurdistan andWestern Armenia to change the demographics, since they feared Armenian separatism and, later on, Kurdish separatism.[9]
Today, the Chechen population in Turkish Kurdistan is scattered among the Kurdish population and has been assimilated into it.[10]
About 200 to 300 Kurdified Chechen families live inSaidsadiq District, some 100 families inPenjwen District and about 200 inSulaymaniyah city inIraqi Kurdistan.[6]
As the first migration wave occurred in the late 1850s, Ottoman authorities managed to direct the refugees towards the Balkans, Western-, and Central Anatolia, since Russia warned the Ottomans not to settle them near the Russian border. The reasons none were settled in Kurdistan were due to the extreme poverty and the lack of materials needed for a settlement. Nevertheless, some migrants settled aroundSarıkamış and founded about 20 villages on land previously owned by Armenians and Greeks. Chechen refugees preferred the mountainous region of Eastern Anatolia including Kurdistan, due to its resemblance toNorth Caucasus and in the early 1860s about 6,000 to 8,000 Caucasian refugees including Chechens settled in Sarıkamış. In 1865, the Ottoman authorities planned on settling 5,000 to 6,000 Chechen refugees in the Turkish-majority town ofÇıldır, but the Russians opposed as it was too close to the front. As a result, most of them were settled southward in the unofficial Kurdish capital ofDiyarbakir andRas al-Ayn in present-day Syria. Between 1901 and 1905, Chechen refugees settled in the Kurdish towns of Varto andBulanık since other ethnic groups likeCircassians had already settled there.[8] No exact numbers exist for the number Chechens in Kurdistan, but the Jordanian Circassian authorAmjad Jaimoukha estimates that 80,000 Chechens left for the Ottoman Empire in 1860 and 23,000 in 1865, however this number seems highly overestimated in retrospect when looking at the number of the Chechen diaspora in the former Ottoman empire today.[11]
WhenH. F. B. Lynch visited Eastern Anatolia in 1901, he wrote that the Circassians (referring to Chechens)[8] wore traditional clothing and that their living standards were far better than that of their Armenian and Kurdish neighbours.[12]In 1925, the Kurds of the newly proclaimed Republic of Turkey staged arebellion led bySheikh Said. Some local Chechens supported the rebellion[13] while others actively worked to constrain it.[14]
While it was already reported by Kurdish writerMehmet Şerif Fırat, in his description of Varto in 1948 that the local Chechens there had forgotten theChechen language,[3] the Turkish state claimed in a secret report in 1987 that the Chechens spokeKurdish as their mother tongue.[2]
| Province | Tribe, Population | Village | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
| Muş Province | Lezgî tribe 641 (1987) | Bağiçi (Çaharbur) | Kurdish-speaking Chechens[2] |
| Kayalık (Zirinik, Zırınge) | Kurdish-speaking Chechens[2] | ||
| Çeçen tribe 387 (1987) | Tepeköy (Tepe) and Tescilsiz (Doğdap) hamlet | Kurdish-speaking Chechens[2] | |
| Ulusırt (Aynan) | Kurdish-speaking Chechens[2] | ||
| — | Kıyıbaşı | Mixed Kurdish and Chechen village[2][15] | |
| Çöğürlü (Arinç) | Mixed Kurdish, Chechen and Arab village | ||
| Aydıngün (Şaşkan) hamlet of Serinova village | Mixed Kurdish and Chechen village[16] |
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