About the author
The person behind the documentary
Djani Efendi is a Meskhetian Turk and the creator of The Meskhetian Turks, an interactive documentary about the Ahıska people. The project grew from a question he is often asked: where he is from.
The documentary is for the whole Ahıska community. Through maps, photographs and sound, it shares the history that connects people whose lives now span many countries.
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His heritage is Ahıska Turkish, also known as Meskhetian Turkish. The community's historic homeland is Meskheti in southern Georgia, around Akhaltsikhe, a city known in Turkish as Ahıska. Meskheti is a historical region; Akhaltsikhe today lies in the administrative region of Samtskhe-Javakheti.
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In November 1944, Soviet authorities forcibly deported families from southern Georgia to Central Asia. For the Ahıska Turkish community, this uprooting is central to the history of its diaspora. Read the Georgian government's account of the deportation and repatriation.
The atlas follows this shared history, helping explain why birthplace and ancestral homeland can be far apart.
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He was born in Almaty, Kazakhstan. He now lives in London with his family.
His birthplace, his Ahıska Turkish heritage and his present home are all parts of his answer to where he is from. The atlas gives that answer its wider historical context.
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Djani Efendi is a Private Equity Associate at Centricus in London, focused on technology and AI infrastructure.
He is studying for an MSc in Computer and Information Technology at the University of Pennsylvania. He holds an MSc in Finance from Cass Business School and a BSc in Mathematical Economics and Finance from the University of East Anglia.
His writing and research are archived at djaniefendi.org; his main site is djaniefendi.com.
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The atlas includes photographs he supplied from his family archive, alongside historical photographs and documentary sources. Captions describe the images without assigning names, places or dates that have not been established.
Explore the photographs in the atlas's archive chapter. Individual images carry their source and credit information in the photo archive.
The Meskheti landscape used for the page's shared preview is by Karel61, under CC BY-SA 4.0.
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