Over 200 Syrian Circassian families ready to return to Russia

More than two hundred Circassian families have expressed a desire to return from Syria to the homeland of their ancestors - Russia, a member of the Federation Council Committee on the Regulation and Organization of Parliamentary Activity, Albert Kazharov, said after the visit of a delegation of Russian lawmakers to Syria, RIA-Novosti reports.

The MP said that during the three-day visit to Syria the senators met in Damascus with the Circassian Charity Society, which includes all the members of the North Caucasus and discussed their return to Russia.

During the trip the senators also visited the suburbs of Damascus, a densely-populated part of the Circassian diaspora, amounting to 8000 people.


The decision to send a parliamentary delegation to Syria was associated with the appeal of Adygea to the Federal Assembly on facilitating the Syrian Circassians to return to their historic homeland.

The communities of Caucasian peoples in the Middle East are primarily concentrated in Turkey, Jordan and Syria and amount to more than 3 million people. Their ancestors left the Caucasus during the nineteenth century wars and settled in the Ottoman Empire. According to various sources, the Syrian community of Circassians amounts to up to 100 thousand people.