LANGUAGE ANALYSIS OF THE AHISKA TURKS LIVING IN ANTALYA IN TERMS OF SOCIAL LINGUISTICS

Abstract

Ahıska is a region adjacent to the Turkish province of Ardahan, which is now within the borders of Georgia. The Ottoman Empire took Ahiska under its rule in the 16th century, but in the 18th century the region was conquered by the Russians and included in the territory of Georgia On the night of November 14, 1944, the Ahiska Turks, who lived in Ahıska and got their name from here, were exiled to different parts of Central Asia by the decision of the Soviet Union. With this exile, over 100,000 Ahiska Turks were separated from their homeland and settled in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, and Azerbaijan. Today, Ahiska Turks, whose population exceeds 500,000, live scattered throughout the world (Turkey, the United States of America, the Russian Federation, Ukraine, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Georgia, and the Caucasus). Ahiska Turks are migrating more and more to Turkey every year and if you look at these migrations, you will find that Antalya is one of the most preferred provinces. For this reason, we felt it necessary to base our study on the Ahiska Turks living in Antalya. Sociolinguistics, a sub-branch of linguistics that attempts to uncover the variations of a language, began to be evaluated as an independent discipline in the 18th century. The language of the Ahiska Turks living in the Antalya province is studied in terms of phonetics and the variations in their languages are evaluated in the field of sociolinguistics according to age, gender, the influence of the official language, and the Russian language.