The Tarki-Karaman camp on the day of remembrance on 12 April, 2018. Photo courtesy of the author. All rights reserved.On 12 April, representatives of the Kumyk people, the largest Turkic ethnic group of the North Caucasus and the third largest of Dagestan, held a ceremony to commemorate the anniversary of the forced deportation of people living in its former Tarki district.
In 1944, residents of Makhachkala’s outlying villages Tarki, Kyakhulai and Alburikent, all part of the Tarkinsky district, were forcibly rounded up and re-homed in houses which had had been left empty. Their Chechen inhabitants were deported to Central Asia and Kazakhstan by the Soviet authorities two months earlier. Both the Tarki Kumyks and Dagestani Chechens have been trying to reclaim their districts ever since.
The Kumyk capital
On 12 April, between 300 and 400 Kumyks gathered in a specially built mosque popularly known as the Tarki-Karaman mosque, as it’s called in the village of Karaman (“Black Stones”). Members of the older generation spoke about how the deportation took place, and a mavlid, a Muslim religious ceremony, took place. Then local leaders reminded people that the main aim of this public action in Karaman was to restore the Tarkinsky district and revive local government there.
