\u201cThey threw us aside to exterminate us from the earth,\u201d Aliev said. \u201cBut despite what we lived through, the people never forgot their homeland. We went to sleep at night dreaming of Crimea.\u201d<\/p>\n
Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Crimean Tatar population has slowly returned to an entirely different homeland from the one they were forced to leave, one dominated by ethnic Russians and Ukrainians. Since the Tatars\u2019 homecoming, they have been\u00a0fighting for their rights<\/a>, but with the newest Russian incursion, the Crimean Tatars here says they feel hemmed in from all sides.<\/p>\n With Russian troops on their streets and Russian president Vladimir Putin\u2019s warning that he will use force to secure Crimea and eastern Ukraine, anxiety is mounting among the minority, which supported the uprising against now ousted President Viktor Yanukovich. The embattled\u00a0<\/b>Tatars, who make up 12 percent of the multiethnic peninsula,\u00a0according to a 2001 census<\/a>, look unlikely to get their way.<\/p>\n On Saturday, Putin requested and received authorization from the upper house of Russia\u2019s parliament to use military force in Ukraine. On a call with U.S. President Barack Obama, Putin \u201cstressed that in case of any further spread of violence to eastern Ukraine and Crimea, Russia retains the right to protect its interests and the Russian-speaking population of those areas,\u201d the Kremlin announced. On Sunday, Ukraine responded by\u00a0calling up its military reservists<\/a>, while Russian troops continued to surround Ukrainian military bases on the peninsula.<\/p>\n \u201cOther ethnic groups here have governments that protect their future, but we don\u2019t have a homeland other than Crimea,\u201d said Abduraman Egiz, a deputy with the\u00a0Mejlis<\/a>, a representative body for the Crimean Tatars.<\/p>\n Russians make up almost 60 percent of the peninsula\u2019s populations, and Ukrainians compose 24 percent according to the 2001 census.<\/p>\n \u201cWe want to protect our language, history and historical figures, but the legacy of the USSR lives, and people don\u2019t understand these basic rights need to be guaranteed,\u201d Egiz said.<\/p>\n Return from exile in Central Asia was a slow process. \u201cAll the adults told us stories about our homeland. They pounded us with them so we would never forget,\u201d Zulfere Memetova, a 30-year-old accountant who grew up in Uzbekistan, remembered.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Her relatives spoke their native language at home, and Memetova said she used to tell her friends at the end of every school term that she wouldn\u2019t be back next year because she would return to Crimea. She ended up finishing her degrees in Uzbekistan.<\/p>\n When the Tatars were finally allowed to return in the late 1980s, they found ethnic Russians living in their houses. They started building their own settlements from scratch. When Memetova\u2019s mother-in-law Zarema Nasibolaeva, a 57-year-old doctor, returned to Crimea in 1993, the family members had sold all their belongings to pay for their homecoming. She remembered finding her ethnic brethren living in tents and ramshackle structures while struggling to build permanent housing. \u201cSome people had even dug holes in the earth and were living there,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Interacting with the rest of the population proved challenging as well. \u201cThe Russians were terrified of us because of the Soviet propaganda. I used to argue with people on public transportation, but after a while we got used to each other,\u201d Nasibolaeva said.<\/p>\n Even before the current crisis, Egiz, who is also a founding member of Bizim Qirim, a youth organization focused on Tatar identity retention, said Crimean Tatars were worried about losing their culture and their linguistic roots. In exile many spoke the Tatar language at home in secret to keep traditions and as a challenge to Soviet rule, but the modern world has come crashing down on the minority.<\/p>\n Bizim Qirim sponsors cultural events, appears on television to support Tatar rights and holds workshops in universities to promote Tatar issues. \u201cOur main challenge is assimilation,\u201d Egiz explained. Bizim Qirim started a petition to return village and street names to their historical Tatar names. \u201cIn our return to Crimea, one of our main goals was to retain the identity of our nation,\u201d he said, \u201cbut as a minority, our rights are lacking. There are no strong laws protecting minority rights.\u201d<\/p>\n Today Memetova and Nasibolaeva\u00a0live in an apartment compound financed by the Ukrainian government that was reserved for Tatars. The streets outside the blocs are unpaved and muddy, and the school that the government was supposed to construct for children has been frozen since 1992.<\/p>\n Memetova\u2019s children do not speak the Tatar language because they spend all day in Russian-language schools while she is at work. \u201cWhen my daughter started day care, she spoke Tatar. Within a month she started speaking to me in Russian,\u201d Memetova said. They worry that their the language and culture is slowly being eroded.<\/p>\n These days, cultural concerns have taken a backseat to developments in Kiev and Moscow. The Tatars came out in Simferopol on Feb. 26 to support the Kiev protests after Yanukovich was ousted. So far, the Tatars say they have not seen signs of support from the government in Kiev. \u201cJust as we\u2019ve had to do everything ourselves, so it will continue,\u201d Memetova said.<\/p>\n Over sweet tea and chocolate in the family\u2019s home, the chance of a better life under Russian control seemed slim, and the prospect of help from the West seemed even further. \u201cMaybe they won\u2019t find a place to export us, but they\u2019ll find a way to extinguish us. We\u2019re afraid of Russia. We\u2019ve never had anything good from them,\u201d Nasibolaeva said<\/p>\n Source<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" SIMFEROPOL, Ukraine \u2014 Ali Aliev was a 9-year-old when German troops occupied Crimea during World War II, and he still remembers the day he and others in his village in the southeastern Sudak region of the peninsula gathered in a … Continue reading A return from exile<\/h2>\n<\/div>\n
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