Despite the collapse of the Soviet Union and the emergence of the "Ahıska Turks' Right to Return" issue, no solution has been reached over the years.
The Georgian government, despite the law passed in 2007 that allows the return of Ahıska Turks to their homeland, has not taken concrete steps to implement it.
Ahıska Turks who were exiled 79 years ago on November 14, 1944, still cannot erase the suffering and harsh days they lived through during their exile.
81-year-old Simizar Mehmetoğlu, who was sent into exile with her family at the age of 4, described how they were left hungry, thirsty, and naked during the exile.
Mehmetoğlu couldn't go to school, she never saw her mother again, and she never got to meet her father again after he was taken by the soldiers...
"I don't know what my father's color was, whether he was tall or short, or whether he was beautiful or ugly. He was gone, no longer with us. We wore everything we could find. I worked in a broken labor camp in Uzbekistan for six years. We swept their doors, carried fodder for their animals. We helped my mother cut grass. I drank muddy water. I got kidney stones.
When we were first exiled to Uzbekistan, my siblings and I were just kids. We traveled by train. They took us by train for a month. If anyone spoke, they would throw them into the water. There was no food or water. We traveled for a month in an empty, hungry train. We endured a lot of hardship. Even now, I tremble when I recall the suffering. I entered Uzbekistan as a child and left as an old person. My parents were gone. We lived as orphans in Uzbekistan for 40 years."
