A Bifurcated Ecosystem: Structure, Agency, and the Transnational Identity of Sarakhs Turkmens Following the Akhal Treaty (1881–1905)

Document Type : Research Article

Author

Assistance professor of history, Farhangian University, Tehran, Iran.

Abstract
Although the Akhal Treaty was ostensibly an agreement for political demarcation between Qajar Iran and Tsarist Russia, in practice, it bifurcated the unified ecosystem of the Turkmen tribes in the Sarakhs and Akhal regions, severely disrupting their spatial, economic, and identity-based order.Following the consolidation of the Akhal Treaty borders, the “spatial fragmentation” of the Turkmen tribes’ ecosystem led to demographic shifts and reactive displacements.Contrary to conventional patterns of migration, these movements in Sarakhs and Akhal were not tantamount to “leaving the homeland,”but rather represented the tribes’ efforts to maintain continuity within a habitat now severed by an imposed boundary. This research seeks to answer the following question: what strategies did the Turkmen tribes adopt in navigating the confrontation between the new structure of border-making and their traditional identity? Employing a historical-analytical approach and qualitative interpretation, this study is based on archival documents, local reports,and library resources.The findings demonstrate that Russia’s centralized and coercive structure drove the Turkmens from armed resistance to forced adaptation, informal bargaining, and ultimately out-migration.Conversely, Iran’s weak and reactive structure rendered tax bargaining, fluidity of citizenship, and informal mobility as the primary axes of tribal agency. On both sides of the border,the “transnational tribal identity”remained the most potent semantic referent; consequently, demographic movements effectively served to reproduce this very identity in defiance of the imposed borders.The significance of this research lies in its redefinition of“border movement”as border-based demographic fluidity, offering a conceptual model for analyzing the behavior of borderland ethnic groups in their encounters with great powers

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  • Receive Date 27 April 2026
  • Revise Date 25 June 2026
  • Accept Date 27 June 2026