Members of other ethnic groups were also deported during the operation, including Kurds and Hemshins, bringing the total to approximately 115,000 evicted people.

However, even though they were released from the special settlements, the Meskhetian Turks, along with the Crimean Tatars and Volga Germans, were forbidden from returning to their native lands, making their exile permanent.

Due to the secrecy of their expulsion and the politics of the Soviet Union, the deportation of the Meskhetian Turks remained relatively unknown and was subject to very little scholarly research until they were targeted by violent riots in Uzbekistan in 1989.

[11] The Meskhetian Turks were one of the six ethnic groups from the Caucasus who were deported in 1943 and 1944 in their entirety by the Soviet secret police—the other five were the Chechens, the Ingush, the Balkars, the Karachays and the Kalmyks.

I was only four or five years old and I don’t remember much but it was cold, and there were bodies being thrown from the train all the time... We weren’t allowed a full education in Uzbekistan.

[24] Members of other minority ethnic groups were also deported with the Meskhetian Turks, including Kurds and Hemshils (Armenian Muslims),[18] giving a total of approximately 115,000 evicted persons.

[18] Unlike the other five ethnic groups of the Caucasus who were accused of Axis collaboration during World War II, the Meskhetian Turks were never officially charged by the Soviet government with any crime; they were not close to any combat.

[33] Svante Cornell pointed out that the eviction was a part of a larger Russian policy that had been in effect since 1864: to remove as many Muslim minorities from the Caucasus as possible.

[18] Beria's secret decree painted the Meskhetian Turks, the Kurds and the Hemshils as "untrustworthy population" that must be removed from the border region.

[15] Some historians interpret this eviction by Stalin's plan to remove the pro-Turkish group from the border area in order to obtain parts of northeastern Turkey.

Scholars Alexandre Bennigsen and Marie Broxup concluded that the deportation of the Meskhetian Turks was thus undertaken as a precaution in case of a Soviet–Turkish war for eastern parts of Turkey.

[37] Initially they tried to use this multiethnic state to exploit cross-border ethnic groups to project influence into the countries neighboring the Soviet Union.

Terry Martin, a professor of Russian studies, assessed that this had the opposite effect; the Soviet fear of "capitalist influence" eventually led to ethnic cleansing of its borderlands, which encompassed the Meskhetian Turks.

The Karachay demographer D. M. Ediev estimated that 12,589 Meskhetian Turks died due to the deportation, amounting to a 13 percent mortality rate of their entire ethnic group.

[23] On 26 November 1948 the Presidium of the USSR Supreme Soviet issued a decree which sentenced the deported groups to permanent exile in those distant regions.

This decree applied to Chechens and Ingush, Crimean Tatars, Volga Germans, Balkars, Kalmyks and the Meskhetian Turks.

[47] The Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, dated 28 April 1956 and titled "On the removal of special deportation restrictions from the Crimean Tatars, Balkars, Soviet Turks, Kurds, Hemshils and members of their families deported during the Great Patriotic War" ordered the release of these ethnic groups from the administrative control of the MVD bodies, but did not envisage their return to their native lands.

On 30 May 1968 a decree of Presidium of the Supreme Soviet acknowledged their deportation, but its text claimed that the Meskhetian Turks "had taken roots" in their new homes of Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, and called upon them to stay there.

[53] In the 1960s, the Soviet government resorted to repression in order to suppress the Meskhetian Turk movement that demanded a right to return to the Meshekti region.

By 1989, only 35 families remained in Georgia, while the only Meskhetian Turks who returned to the Meskheti region were eventually forced to leave it.

[19] They tell us we're unwanted: in Uzbekistan the Uzbeks tell us, in Kazakhstan the Kazakhs tell us, and now there are whisperings in other republics... Where can we live, if they won't even let us onto the land of our ancestors?

The situation changed, at least on paper, in the late 1980s when the new Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, decided to break all ties with the Stalinist past.

On 14 November 1989, the Supreme Soviet declared that the forced displacement of ethnic groups during Stalin's era, including the Meskhetian Turks, was "illegal and criminal".

[54] Even after the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, the newly independent Georgia refused to give Meskhetian Turks the right to return to the Meskheti region.

[20] Unlike the other ethnic groups resettled during Soviet deportations, the Meskhetian Turks were sparsely mentioned in the books covering the subject by historians Alexander Nekrich and Robert Conquest.

[56] Russian historian Pavel Polian considered all of the deportations of entire ethnic groups during Stalin's era, including those from the Caucasus, as a crime against humanity.

He also noted that the charges of treason were "both unfair and hypocritical" considering that almost 40,000 Meskhetian Turks fought on the Soviet side during World War II.