Today marks the 81st anniversary of the deportation of the Meskhetian Turks. In November 1944, on Stalin's orders, approximately 86,000 Meskhetian Turks were forcibly deported from Meskheti (a region in modern-day Georgia) to Central Asia. This deportation resulted in the deaths of 17,000 people, and the survivors found new homes in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan.

The deportation of the Meskhetian Turks was part of the Soviet policy of "cleansing" the Black Sea coast of Turkic-speaking peoples, similar to the deportation of the Crimean Tatars. A series of forced displacements in Soviet Russia also affected several peoples of the North Caucasus (in 1943 and early 1944), and even earlier, the Vologda Germans (in 1941) and Koreans (in 1937).

Currently, Meskhetian Turks live in various countries around the world, including Turkey, Russia, Azerbaijan, the United States, and elsewhere, and their total population is approximately 500,000.