WELCOME

"They're a good team, a good team," the scribe says,

Jan. 2, 2017 by Elizabeth Duran

"They're a good team, a good team," the scribe says, "and the Cossacks are the best team in the universe."

Markusic, who grew up in a tiny peasant town in the Turkish-speaking Caucasus, is more than a bit of an outlier in his image of the Cossacks. He is a Turkish historian, a former military officer, and he is the only person in the world who actually knows where the Cossacks originate. He is also a devout member of the Orthodox Church, an institution he has been called one of the most "religious" in history. Like his Cossacks—who have come to Russia, he says, with the aid of the state, and have also been living in a "house of holy men"—he has never written about them because he is afraid they will try to harm him.

Markusic's response to Mehmed, he says, is that, in order to make peace with the Turks, the Cossacks must be held to account for their behavior.

Markusic has an interesting line of argument in his response. "You're not talking about how they are trying to kill you," he says, "but how they are trying to kill you." He does not say whether the Turks will be willing to accept that they are persecuting the Cossacks, but he does say that if they do, all they will do is take them, and then they will start to spread their word. The Cossacks are a good team, a good team, and they are a good team. It makes sense that they will use the Turks to help them gain control of territory. But if they don't, they will do it on the side of the people they want to control, in the direction of the people they control. They will use their power and their wealth to fight against the Cossacks.

The Cossack is a fairly recent phenomenon in Russia. In the late 20th century, the Cossack empire has been in decline for decades. By contrast, as many as 600,000 people died as a result of Soviet rule in the 70s in Anatolia, a region bordering Georgia, Russia, and Ukraine. The decline of the Soviet Union led to a period of massive economic and political turmoil for many Cossacks in eastern and central Anatolia—from the peasantry of the Cossacks in the north to the military of the Ottoman Empire in the east. The population had been shrinking,