mindful of the past

Crimean Tatars Face Uncertain Future
Seventy years after Stalin brutally deported
thousands of Crimean Tatars to Central Asia, the
descendants of those who returned fear
repression as Russia tightens its grip on the
peninsula.
By NOAH SNEIDER
March 13, 2014
BAKHCHYSARAY, Ukraine — Outside
the ornate auburn gates of the Khan’s
Palace here in the historical capital of
the Crimean Tatars, the streets are
empty. Many stores are shuttered, their
doors padlocked.
Most people do their shopping in the
morning and stay inside the rest of the
day. Children are kept home from
school. A sense of foreboding hangs
over the city.
“If we speak honestly, we’re all afraid,”
said Ruslan Mustafaev, who stood
guard with six other men at a
neighborhood watch post this week. “If
they want to, they will come for us.”
As Crimea prepares to vote on Sunday
on whether to secede from Ukraine and
join Russia, the prospect of a renewed
Russian presence in Crimea evokes for
Tatars raw memories of Communist-era
depredations.
A Turkic Muslim minority with deep
roots on the Black Sea peninsula, the
Crimean Tatars see themselves as a
native population, though they have
had to struggle to maintain their place
in their homeland. Under the Soviets,
the Tatars lived through
collectivization, Stalin’s purges, World
War II and, in 1944, a brutal ethnic
cleansing that sent nearly 200,000 into
exile in the Gulag and Central Asia,
unfairly accused of collaboration with
the Nazis. Nearly half are believed to
have died .
Most Tatars returned to Crimea as the
Soviet Union crumbled. During their
first years back, many lived in
makeshift shelters, rebuilding their
community literally with their own
hands. Now, imagining oneself again as
a Russian Crimean Tatar is, for most, a
step too far.
“The entire Soviet system demeaned us
over the course of many years,” said
Aider Abdullayev, a City Council deputy
and part-time neighborhood watchman.
“Therefore, our people perfectly see
and perfectly understand what is
happening now.”
Citing examples like Abkhazia and
Chechnya, many Tatars fear a war that
would leave their relatively small
population — roughly 12 percent of
Crimea — subject to ethnic backlash
and the sort of repression they only
recently left behind. They also worry
that after playing an outsize role in
Crimea’s fledgling civil society over the
past 23 years, they will soon find
themselves trapped in an enclave cut
off from the world, watched over by
security services and political leaders
loyal to the Kremlin.
“In 1944, when the Tatars were
deported, we felt what a dictatorship
was in reality,” said Ismail Ismailov, an
organizer of the opposition in Crimea
during the uprising that overthrew
President Viktor F. Yanukovych. “So
Crimean Tatars, unlike anyone else,
value and feel what it means to have
freedom and democracy. The
democratic forces in Ukraine have
always counted on the support of
Crimean Tatars.”
The Tatars have been a visible presence
among the pro-Ukraine forces. In late
February, Tatar protesters clashed with
pro-Russia demonstrators outside the
Crimean Parliament. Tatar women have
held regular antiwar rallies outside
Tatar villages, often chanting, “Crimea
is Ukraine.” And last weekend, Tatar
flags waved beside Ukrainian ones at
the largest pro-Ukraine demonstration
in the regional capital of Simferopol
since the crisis began.
Mr. Ismailov’s family moved back to
Crimea during the Orange Revolution
that shifted power in Ukraine in 2004,
coming from Siberian exile by way of
Azerbaijan.
“I saw the Orange Revolution and
couldn’t believe that such a thing could
even happen. It was incredibly cool,”
said Mr. Ismailov, 24. “I had thought
that the whole post-Soviet space was
still dictatorial. But I was too young to
participate then.” When the protests
began in Kiev, he said, “I understood
that it was fate, that I need to do
everything in order not to return to
Azerbaijan, to the Soviet Union, to that
dictatorial system.”
Of the four original organizers of the
Crimean version of Kiev’s
Independence Square protest
movement, only Mr. Ismailov remains
active here. As of Wednesday
afternoon, the other three had been
kidnapped, fled or gone into hiding
under threat. During a 40-minute
interview, Mr. Ismailov received five
calls from fellow activists urging him to
leave Crimea, or telling him that they
had left already. He no longer walks
the streets of his home city, taking taxis
instead. Nonetheless, he is determined
to stay.
“If I leave, it will all be over,” he said,
his eyebrows furrowing in defiance.
“Although it is even scarier being the
only one left.”
The Kremlin and the new Crimean
government led by Sergei Aksyonov
have expressed strong sympathy for the
Tatars’ concerns. Russian leaders
invited a former Soviet dissident and
current member of the Ukrainian
Parliament, Mustafa Dzhemilev, to
Moscow, where he met with
representatives of Russian Tatarstan
and spoke for 30 minutes on
Wednesday by phone with President
Vladimir V. Putin of Russia.
Earlier on Tuesday, the Crimean
Parliament passed a resolution
providing for protections of Tatar
rights, including proportional
representation in the new government
and official status for the Crimean Tatar
language.
Mr. Aksyonov told Russian state media,
referring to the potential for ethnic
clashes: “They call me from
Bakhchysaray and say that allegedly
crosses are being put on their homes,
and that at night people will come for
them. I tell them, take it easy, that
won’t happen.”
Few Tatars put any stock in these
assurances. Journalists have
documented instances of crosses
marked on Tatar homes, and as the
referendum gets closer, the community
has stepped up its precautionary
measures.
“Any small injustice can become a
bigger injustice, and even a
catastrophe,” said Refat Chubarov, the
leader of the Mejlis, the local Tatar
governing body.
Outside Bakhchysaray, neighborhood
watch groups began patrolling Tatar
areas over a week ago, and have
expanded from five posts to nine since
then. At each post, groups of roughly
five men stand guard on three-hour
shifts between 6 p.m. and 6 a.m.
They carry only sticks — no match for
the heavily armed Russian forces
roaming the same streets — but hope
to prevent the sort of provocations that
could ignite catastrophe.
“Crimean Tatars have one homeland,”
said Mr. Abdullayev, the city
councilman who also does sentry duty.
“Other nationalities who live in Crimea
also have their own homelands: The
Ukrainian has Ukraine, the Greek has
Greece, the Russian has Russia. Our
people don’t have a different home. We
aren’t leaving here. We’re ready to die
here on our homeland.”
While the Tatars have a history of
peaceful resistance, the potential for
radicalization does exist. Tatar militants
have fought alongside the opposition in
Syria, and Hizb ut-Tahrir, an Islamic
group banned in several countries
including Russia, has 1,000 members in
Crimea, according to Fazil Amzayev, a
spokesman for the group’s local
chapter.
“Crimea on its own does not have the
potential for internal conflict,” Mr.
Amzayev said, standing outside the Big
Khan Mosque inside the Khan’s Palace.
“For 20 years different nationalities,
religions and denominations have
existed here such that there haven’t
been any major conflicts. This may be
the only territory in the post-Soviet
space that has been able to avoid that
so far.”