Georgian Budget Will Not Cope with Repatriation of Meskheti Turks

PanARMENIAN.Net - 35 thousand Meskheti Turks live in the territory of Turkey today, reported State Minister for Conflict Settlement and Chair of the State Commission on Repatriation of Refugees Georgi Khaindrava at a news conference in Tbilisi. In his words, when entering the CE Georgia pledged to return Meskheti Turks to their fatherland. The year 2011 is determined the term for repatriation.



«We do not know yet, how many of the Meskheti Turks living in Turkey want to return to their fatherland, however the process should comprise all the country and they should return not only to Samtskhe-Javakheti, from where they were exiled during the Stalin regime in 1944,» the State Minister said. He emphasized that if those people consider Georgia their fatherland, they should settle in any part of its territory. Khaindrava remarked the Georgian budget will not be able to cope with repatriation of Meskheti Turks.



An international conference on the repatriation of Meskheti Turks to Georgia will be held in Tbilisi on 27 April. The forthcoming conference will come as the last stage, which will be followed by the process of repatriation of Meskheti Turks to their historic lands.



Organized by the Council of Europe Commission on National Minority Rights of and the Georgian Government, the forum will bring together representatives from Meskheti Turk communities residing in different countries. A law on repatriation is to be adopted by the Georgian Parliament on the same day. The conference will mull over the places for repatriation of Meskheti Turks to the regions of Georgia, Trend reports.