How many CIRCASSIAS are there?

Our beloved country, Circassia, which is waiting impatiently her lost children. Some of her children are trying to go back to their lonely home and to live with their brothers together. Some are trying to change the destiny of their nation's natural terrible end. They live in Diaspora countries as a son or daughter of Circassian parents. But, probably most of their sons and daughters won't be. Circassian culture and customs with their language will die before the Circassian nation. As I have said above some people with the motivation of going back to homeland and live there like their grand grand parents are trying to change this natural destiny. So you can met them in virtual (facebook, websites, chatrooms ..) and real organizations.

But although they resembled to each other like “twins”, they were different because of belonging to different tribes in the Circassia in the past. But today again they are mostly different from each other not because of tribal reasons but because of their life philosophies (political and religious views). They are so deep in their life philosophies that sometimes they even forget their national problems and views of thinking. Some of them define themselves as social Circassian, some others as Muslim Circassian, some others as democratic Circassian, some others as modern Circassian, some others as traditonal Circassians and some others as modern Circassian ... etc. And don't forget that also there are of course not as more as Muslims but there are Christian and even some minor Jewish Circassians. The list is long so I couldn't write all of them. These are not personal chooses but the identity descriptions of groups or communities or organizations they belong to. Because of that there a lot of small organizations whose members are not generally more than 2 or 3 thousand. These are the lucky and hardworking ones, because there are a lot of more who can't reach these numbers.

Circassian people with different life philosophies gather and constitute groups and later turned into organizations. While gathering and getting larger, they also construct a Circassia and a Circassian Life Style in their minds. They write their own books, they choose some customs which is proper to their own life philosophy, they wear in certain clothes, they spoke in certain self created languages with certain words. Some of them banned “İslam”, some others “Socializm”, some others “Nationalizm”... And they need also get some truthness about their opinion from the past, so they did and taught and support their own historians who write and read the Circassian history with the view of their community philosophies. So they don't like each other much and they claim themselves as real Circassians. They comments the past and present events and opinions so differently that sometimes you can not aware that they belong to the same history and race.

These Circassian groups and their supporters have created virtual Circassias and Circassian people descriptions in their community philosopies. And what is funny, our brothers live in the homeland are not even aware of these virtual Circassias. I am not sure about what will their reactions be about them!

Some young generation supports these different communities, but some others completely ignore these differences and they also create another community, sometimes by disobeying the olds which is not normal considering our strong and solid customs. They also express themselves as rebirth of Circassian community. They try to learn their language, customs and they are very active in social activities. You could only see the Circassian dances only in weddings before but these young groups can dance anywhere, even in the middle of a street by ignoring the others' surprised glances. They say only in this way they can introduce and popularize Circassian people and culture to others. Some olds clapp them with tears in their eyes, but some others express their anger on every platform.

All of the groups mentioned above try to their best. They work hard but they their suceess is generally small and ignored by other communities. Why? They have to work much as their participants' number is not enough, their success is not big, because the numbers of the participants' number is not big.

Also there is another group, who completely takes themselves back to fed up with this mess.

So I hope you understand the main point. There is only one real Circassia and I hope one day we will live there. But how it can be possible to go and live there in peace with lots of Circassians in our minds. We can not go there TOGETHER with these different and opposite Circassias in our minds, even if we managed this, we could not live in peace TOGETHER. As a last sentence for all the Circassians from a famous (for me but I don't know if he is famous enough for the others) intellectual, K. JABAĞ by looking at us from the past: “Don't discuss the opinions, ideas, problems ... which are related to whole sociality by taking yourself back and secretly.”

Sincerely.
Kenugi J. UBYKH