The Muslim and not only the Muslim world today marks another anniversary of the deportation of the Crimean Tatars. The tragedy has been discussed many times, including on our website, and undoubtedly many people will discuss it today. However, all these discussions will be completely hypocritical if they are limited only to the tragedy of the past.
In reality, the tragedy continues today. And it is not only the tragedy of the ongoing war against Ukraine, which is taking place largely on the territory of historical Crimea, including southern Ukraine. It is also the tragedy of the Crimean Tatar people in particular, which was renewed with the occupation of Crimea by Russia in 2014.
People who say that in 2014 the Crimean Tatars did not seize their chance to sell their loyalty to the Kremlin in exchange for its favor are either ignorant or deliberately lying scoundrels. After all, the entire concept of «Russian Crimea» and its «return to its native port» was originally based on justifying the deportation of the Crimean Tatars. Without them, which changed the demographic balance compared to pre-war times, the ratio of the main ethnic communities in Crimea would be very different. Not to mention that this balance changed from the beginning of its conquest by the Russian Empire, not in favor of the Crimean Tatars, who were systematically expelled from the peninsula in favor of Christian colonists.
The Crimean Tatars began to return en masse to Crimea after Ukraine gained independence, and it was under Ukrainian rule that they gained a kind of national-political subjectivity in the form of the Crimean Tatar Mejlis, which mobilized fellow Tatars to fight for their rights. This was one of the most disturbing aspects of life under the rule of independent Ukraine for the supporters of «Russian Crimea». Although, no, not Crimea, but Taurida — that’s how they always referred to the peninsula, wanting to erase the memory of its Turkic history carried by the ethnonym «Crimea».
Therefore, the fact that the overwhelming majority of Crimean Tatars, their conscious part, chose Ukraine over Russia is not a mistake, but a pattern. Because if the relationship between the Crimean people and the Zaporozhian Cossacks was different, both conflicting and allied, their relationship with the Russian Empire, the USSR, and now the Russian Federation has always been negative.
Since 2014, the traditional Russian imperialist policy of displacing the Crimean Tatars from Crimea on the one hand and settling them with Russian colonists on the other has resumed. According to 2019 data, about 50,000 of the approximately 280,000 Crimean Tatars have left Crimea, which is almost 18% of the population. At the same time, about the same number of colonists, mostly hostile to the Crimean Tatar people and Islam, were brought to the peninsula from Russia.
However, with the new stage of implementation of the aggressive plans of the «Russian world» towards Ukraine, which includes its full or partial incorporation into the re-established Orthodox Russian Empire, the tragedy of the Crimean Tatar people enters a new phase. And now, not only in Crimea, but also in other occupied territories of southern Ukraine, the occupiers are openly propagating what they have always dreamed of — the revival of the «Taurida Governorate», which should finally erase the memory of the Turkic-Muslim Crimea.
Such proposals are already being voiced by deputies of the State Duma and the Federation Council, and billboards are being put up in the newly occupied territories promoting the revival of the Taurida Governorate, which would include not only Crimea but also the Kherson, Mykolaiv, and Zaporizhia regions of Ukraine.
Of course, for the Crimean Tatars there is no fundamental difference between the reality of Russian-occupied Crimea and the reality that would arise if it were included in the Taurida governorate. After all, since 2014 there is only one name for Crimea. But for those who still had doubts that Crimea could exist in Putin’s Russia, or even — it’s funny to say — the restoration of Crimean Tatar autonomy, as some humorists suggested, there will be complete clarity about the goals of the occupiers.
But with this clarity comes a full understanding of what is needed for Crimea to survive and revive, and for the people who bear its name to regain their positions in it.