A Russian military appellate court has rejected the appeals of four Crimean Tatars—Nariman Ametov, Ali Mamutov, Vokhid Mustafayev, and Enver Khalilyayev—who were convicted of involvement with the organization ‘Hizb ut-Tahrir.’ The sentences handed down by the Southern District Military Court on May 21, 2026, remain unchanged. According to the TASS news agency, citing court sources, the individuals—part of what is known as the "third Dzhankoy group"—were sentenced to prison terms ranging from 14 to 15 years.
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.