President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan on Tuesday issued a message in remembrance of the plight of victims of the notorious Circassian exile 160 years ago.

"I share the great pain of our Circassian brothers and sisters and send my condolences to those who died on the 160th anniversary of their inhumane exile from their homeland, Caucasia," Erdoğan said in a statement published on his X account.

The Circassian community marks May 21 as the beginning of an 1864 exile. The expulsion of Circassians, who call themselves Adyghe, happened toward the end of the decline of the Ottoman Empire, whose clout spread to the Caucasus, and at a time of an ambitious campaign by the Russian Empire to extend its borders despite tough resistance by locals in the region including Circassians, Abkhazians, Chechens and others. The resistance, which gained prominence through the leadership of Sheikh Shamil, was brutally quashed with the massacres of the local populations and their subsequent exile. Most Circassians were herded onto ships to be transferred from the northeastern shores of the Black Sea to Anatolia. Unofficial figures show some 1.5 million Circassians were sent into exile within one month. Thousands perished due to hunger and thirst and many others died when their ships sank. An estimated number of about 500,000 people perished during the exile.

Türkiye has a sizable community of Circassians, about 1.5 million to 3 million people, although official numbers are not available. They are mainly concentrated in the northern provinces of Samsun, Amasya, Tokat and the northwestern provinces of Sakarya, Kocaeli, Balıkesir and Kütahya.