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Vol. 80/No. 32 August 29, 2016
Struggles of Turkic peoples bedevil Moscow, Ankara
BY EMMA JOHNSON
As tensions between Moscow and Kiev ratchet up around Crimea, and while
Moscow and Ankara move to improve relations despite backing opposite
sides in the civil war raging in Syria, the large numbers of Turkic
peoples in Russia and adjacent former Soviet republics pose potential
sources of instability for the rulers of both Russia and Turkey.
The Tatars, Crimea’s inhabitants for centuries, are an oppressed
nationality making up 12-13 percent of the peninsula’s population. They
were brutalized by czardom before the 1917 Russian Revolution. In the
early 1920s, under the Bolsheviks’ Crimeanization policy led by V.I.
Lenin, Tatar culture flourished.
After the death of Lenin, the counterrevolutionary bureaucracy that
consolidated control headed by Joseph Stalin reversed this course. They
subjected the Tatars to mass deportation during the Second World War.
While Tatars are discounted and ignored by the major capitalist
governments in Washington and Europe and persecuted by Moscow, they are
part of some 200 million people in the world speaking a Turkic language
and practicing Islam. The Crimean Tatars have close ties with Turkey.
In Turkey, approximately 150,000 people are Crimean Tatars, and an
estimated 5 million are of Crimean Tatar descent, the result of waves of
refugees fleeing czarist and later Stalinist rule.
Following Moscow’s annexation of Crimea, which was opposed by the
Tatars, they have been subjected to repression. Their national assembly,
the Mejlis, has been banned and many historic leaders barred from
entering Crimea.
Following the Second World Congress of the Crimean Tatars, held in
Ankara in August 2015, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan met with
Tatar leaders Mustafa Dzhemilev and Refat Chubarov. He pledged never to
recognize Moscow’s annexation of Crimea.
Another branch of the Tatar people make up the majority of the
population of Tatarstan, which has been at the forefront of the movement
for autonomy for republics within the Russian Federation, leading to
friction with Moscow, and posing questions over the conditions of Muslim
people there.
During the last two decades Ankara has built close economic, educational
and cultural ties with Tatarstan. Turkish businesses today account for
an important portion of jobs and direct foreign investment there,
estimated at $1.5 billion and expected to increase.
When Ankara shot down a Russian plane over the Syrian border in November
2015, Moscow severed ties and instituted economic sanctions against
Turkey. The Tatarstan government declined to issue any statement of
political solidarity with the Russian government and opposed cutting
ties with Ankara.
Related articles:
Russian gov’t ratchets up conflict with Kiev in Crimea
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