Turkey grants citizenship to over 500 Ahiska Turks
Ahiska Turks living in what is now Georgia were expelled by Soviet ruler Joseph Stalin in 1944. Some 25,000 people from the ethnic group now live in Turkey.
Ahiska Turks are now dispersed throughout the former Soviet Union, United States and Turkey.
Turkey has granted citizenship to 585 out of some 3,000 Ahiska Turks who have moved from Ukraine to the country since December 2015.
Ahiska Turks are an ethnic group formerly inhabiting the Meskheti region of Georgia, on the border of Turkey.
Joseph Stalin, former general secretary of the Central Committee of the Soviet Union's Communist Party ordered their deportation from the area.
For over seven decades, they were forced to move from one land to another - stateless and poor.
TRT World’s Hasan Abdullah reports.
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