 In the late 1980s, several inter-ethnic disputes had already plagued the Fergana region.Around June 1989 in the neighboring Uzbekistan, ethnic Uzbeks launched a series of pogroms against Meskhetian Turks, the cause of which was believed to have been rooted in the existing economic disparities between the two ethnicities.Similarly, in the Tajikistan, there were clashes between local Tajiks and Armenians who had recently been deported from Nagorno-Karabakh.