Language analysis of the Meskhetian Turks living in Antalya in terms of social linguistics

Ahıska is a region that is today located within the borders of Georgia, and forms a neighboring city to the Turkish Ardahan. The Turkish presence in Ahıska began to manifest itself intensely with the Kipchaks who settled in the region from the 11th century. Along with the Kipchaks, the Bashkir, Pecheneg, Karluk, and Oguz tribes were among the other Turkish tribes that settled in the Ahıska region. The Ottoman Empire took over Meskhetia in the 16th century. But already in the 19th century the region was conquered by the Russians. Whereupon the struggle for rule between the Ottomans and Russians began and was finally ended by the Moscow Agreement of 1921, by which the region was officially removed from the Turkish lands and left within the borders of Georgia. During the Second World War, the Meskhetian Turks, who lived in Meskhetian, which they were named after, on the night of November 14, 1944 were exiled to various parts of Central Asia by the decision of the Soviet Union. With this exile over 100,000 Meskhetian Turks were separated from their homeland and settled in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and Azerbaijan. Meskhetian Turks, whose population exceeds 500,000, live scattered all over the world. With the dissolution of the Soviet Union they began to migrate to Turkey intensively.Apart from Turkey they are continuing their life in the United States, Russia, Ukraine, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Georgia and other parts of the Caucasus. Meskhetian Turks are increasing their migration to Turkey every year. Considering these migrations, it was observed that Antalya is the first preferred province. The main reason for this is that they had to acquire Russian as a second language in the Central Asian regions where they previously lived and accordingly have the opportunity to find a job in the tourism sector. Therefore, we felt that it was necessary to base our study on Meskhetian Turks living in Antalya. The Turkish spoken by the Meskhetian Turks is considered as a dialect of Turkish. Our study is a language study of the dialects of the Meskhetian Turks living in Antalya in the context of sociolinguistics. Sociolinguistics, which tries to uncover the variables in a language and is a subgroup of linguistics, has been viewed as an independent discipline since the 19th century. In the first part of our work, we have included what sociolinguistics is, what it covers and what studies are being carried out in this area. In the second part we clarified who the Meskhetian Turks were, outlined their historical processes, and gave place to the sociological views of the people living in Antalya. The third part explains the differences in the languages of the Meskhetian Turks living in Antalya by age, occupation, gender, the effect of the standard language, the physical environment, etc. evaluated within the field of sociolinguistics. In the fourth part, the audio recordings obtained through interviews were transmitted as text using the phonetic alphabet. Our study, which essentially consists of four parts, has been concluded with the conclusion and recommendations part and completed with the bibliography and appendices section. Keywords: Meskhetian Turks, Sociolinguistics, Language Analysis