 And I'm Joshua Cooper, welcome to Cooper Union, what's happening with human rights around our world on Think Tech Live, broadcasting from our downtown studio in Honolulu, Hawaii, in Moana, New York, here. Today's episode I'm hosting is looking at Kraman Tatar Stand for Self-Determination, Tatar rights diminished during the Russian War. Today I'm very fortunate to welcome an associate professor of social sciences at the University of Ankara. Felix, thank you so much for joining us to share with us a bit about the struggle for self-determination by the Kraman Tatars over the centuries. Yes, thank you, thank you for inviting me. We know that Kraman Tatars, people maintain their unique history in modern Ukraine and that Kraman Tatars are Muslim indigenous peoples to the peninsula that have faced severe human rights hardships since this current Russian war, but also historically under various Soviet regimes. Could you share with us a bit about some of the struggles for self-determination that the Kraman Tatar people have dealt with while trying to exercise their fundamental human rights in their homeland? Yeah, the Kraman Tatars are indigenous people of Crimea, as you said, and they go back way into the ancient period. They derive from the Sarmatians, gods, Khmerians, Hazars, Kipchaks, all civilizations of the Black Sea area, but they consolidated their identity in the 16th century under the Crimean Hanate, during which they consolidated into one language, Crimean Tatar language and one religion, Muslim religion. The Crimean Tatars was a significant civilization on a par with Al Andulus in terms of their Islamic achievements. But however, in 1783, Crimea was annexed by the Russian Empire. And from that on, the calamities of Crimean Tatars started. More than two thirds of the Crimean Tatar population had to leave the peninsula to the lands of Ottoman Empire and only one third was left in Crimea. Despite the promises of the Russian Empire, the Crimean Tatars suffered in terms of their religious freedoms and in terms of their political and economic freedoms. They had to join the Soviet Union despite their will. And in the Soviet Union too, the attempts to de-tatarize Crimea continued. For example, Stalin deported the remaining Crimean Tatars, the one third, to the Central Asia and Siberia. And after 18 May 1944, not one Tatar was left in the peninsula. Actually, they remembered they forgot in a village and the Soviet soldiers went back and they put all the villagers in a ship and they just let the ship sink in the Black Sea. So that's how the Soviet regime was adamant to de-tatarize Crimea, to Sovietize and colonize the land completely. Yeah, this was some of the tragic history of the Crimean Tatars that is unfortunately being repeated today, but I think we'll talk about it soon. No, and it's horrible as you share the specifics because many people aren't even aware of the Crimean Tatars people at it being their homeland and making the connection, but showing historically over the centuries what hardships they face and the brutalization. We know that under Stalin, he accused the approximately 200,000 Crimean Tatars of working with the Germans. But of course, that's what we see happening with today with Putin making claims as well about everyone in denazifying. But your point about the de-tatarizing is absolutely crucial and it brings up many of the challenges that they're facing because they're looking at basic human rights, those civil and political rights of freedom of religion, freedom of association, freedom to identify and have one's own nationality but then also the economic, social and cultural hardships that they also have faced over the centuries. And as you shared really just the humanitarian war aspects of burying them in a ship, sinking it, but also that trek, maybe you could describe of how hard it was to be moved from their homeland to Siberia and some of the other places and the hardships that they faced during that time and how did they ever return to be able to reclaim their land and understand and exercise their right of self-determination? Yeah, that's an excellent question. The Crimean Tatars were deported actually throughout 18 days. They were put into cattle wagons and it took 18 days for them to reach to Siberia, Urals and various parts of Central Asia. And there they were just dumped there. There were no accommodation, no jobs, no water. And the Crimean Tatars have lost 40% of their population due to the hunger and famine and diseases. After that, the Crimean Tatars lived in a special settlement regime and they had to sign a document every day just to show that they're not moving anywhere else. And only after Stalin died in 10 years, the Crimean Tatars were kind of free to live their special settlement regimes. And what they did was the families for the first time came together because the whole deportation thing, it's shuffled the population. So the mothers lost their children, sisters lost their sisters, grandfathers lost their grandchildren, right? So they came together in several Central Asian cities such as Tashkent, Chimkent or Bekabat, Chirchik. And there they formed neighborhoods and this is how they maintained their identities. They lived close by each other, they spoke their language and every night at dinner, they talked about their homeland to their children. And it was banned to speak Russian in a Crimean Tatar home. So the minute you enter from the home's door, you know, house door, you have to speak Crimean Tatar. So this was how they were so resilient to adamant about maintaining their identity and their attachment to homeland, their beloved homeland, actually may, you know, help them to strive against all these difficulties. So this is another reason we call the Crimean Tatars indigenous people because they have this very special ontological relationship to their land. So today they don't accept that they are any Tatars, right? They want their name to be used fully as Crimean Tatars because their identity emerged in the kind of golden cradle. This is what they call their homeland in the golden cradle of Crimea. This is anthropologically so interesting. We don't see many people who have returned their homeland after 50 years of exile. And they did it completely based on their own resources. It's not the Soviet state or Russian state or Ukrainian state that returned them. They organized themselves, they sold their houses in Uzbekistan and they put all their belongings in their cars, right? Hundreds and thousands of people moved together back to Crimea and they formed tent cities, they formed shanty towns, they even, you know, digged holes and leave there until they get settled, right? And they had to fight for this right to return and right to land because the place they returned, you know, as always happens is not the place you left, right? It's been 50 years past. So the home population in Crimea who were Russians that were settled after the 50s, 1950s, right? They were not very welcoming. They thought, you know, these newcomers would return them, would take back their property. But that's not what Crimean Tatars did because as a tradition, they are non-violent people. So they didn't kick out the people who were actually leaving their very own houses, right? Using their very own furniture. They said, okay, I understand that you have been living here for 50 years. So what we will do is we will form new settlements, right? That's what they did. But even that process has been hampered by a very chauvinistic Russian politicians in independent Sula. Yeah, we can talk about it in a minute. Yeah, I know. And you really did share a lot about the rich resistance that the Crimean Tatars were persistent and passionate about returning. And this exodus really for equality and equity in their homeland is astonishing. And so it's great to share that. And that would almost be enough of a challenge. But now many people think the current conflict really began on February 24th. But for the Crimean Tatars, it's been since 2014. And we can almost say continuous as you share throughout history. Can you share what happened in 2014 and some of the most violent as well as violations of human rights that we see happening to the Crimean Tatars people just for being who they are as the indigenous peoples to the peninsula? Yeah, definitely. 2000, before 2014, actually, there was some kind of Russian, as I mentioned, Russian chauvinism in the peninsula politics. And these people were dominant in the administrative ordinance of this peninsula. And they were claiming that, you know, Crimea is Soviet, Crimea is Russian. But these people were not very effective in general among the population. And the Crimea, you know, Crimea was part of Ukraine and it was in a relatively democratic atmosphere because Ukraine was not like Russia. It did not have a very authoritarian structure. It was not perfect democracy, but it had this kind of de facto pluralism, right? Because there wasn't one person like Putin who could monopolize power. In Ukraine, there was this kind of balance of different oligarchs, different political people, political personalities. So there was this plurality, there was relative atmosphere of freedom. And Kremlin Tatars, being the resourceful people they are, they took advantage of all these opportunities. They began to rebuild their national identity, their national culture. They opened the national schools. They started to teach their language to kids to the kindergarten level. They wrote new coursebooks. They opened museums, theaters, dance troupes. They recovered their former Hanate history or archival documents. Everything was going well in terms of rejuvenating their lost culture. But 2014, and it was, there was a relative peace in the peninsula as well. The Russians got used to Kremlin Tatars, Kremlin Tatars got used to the Slavic peninsula or Slavic people of the peninsula. But so there was no kind of a Russian separatism or Russian demand for Crimea to be a Russian peninsula or anything. The Russian people also were satisfied with living in Ukraine. But certainly in 2014, just after the Euromaidan Revolution happened in Kiev, Russia interfered in Crimea with force, with 40,000 troops on ground. They obtained all kinds of strategic points such as important military bases and important government buildings. And they actually instituted a kind of coup data. And this was also sudden. Ukraine did not have a government at the moment. So they could not defend Crimea. And the Crimean Tatars became the only Ukrainians in the peninsula. They sided with Ukraine despite a lot of pressure from both Russian Federation Putin and also from some of the Russian politicians in the peninsula. They waved the Ukrainian flag on the streets. They took to the streets without violence and they tried to resist the occupation. Unfortunately, the Nive rulers of the Crimea organized a fake referendum which wasn't appropriate in terms of in line with any kind of international law. And they declared one side of the that, you know, they annexed the peninsula, despite the Crimean Tatars boycotted this referendum. And after the war, the Crimean Tatars in a way were punished in different ways. For example, they were forced to leave the peninsula. Some of the Crimean Tatars, especially indigenous leaders, majorless leaders, the representatives in the Crimean Tatar parliament, right? National indigenous parliament, they were prohibited entering the peninsula. And some of them, if they resisted, you know, they were put into prison. And some of them, like 150 Crimean Tatars are right now in the Russian prisons because of all these kind of political crimes that was made by the, you know, Russian government. All the Crimean Tatar cultural institutions were shot, such as national schools, such as newspapers, media outlets, and Crimean Tatars are constantly right now under supervision. The other day I was talking to a professor who just came from Crimea to Turkey and he was telling me, even teaching in the university became a problem, you know? You don't know what to say because anything you say is punishable according to Russian law. So there is a complete lack of freedom of speech, freedom of thought. Right now, and Crimean Tatars are under a lot of political pressure. No, it really is so informative for you to share because people can't fathom, but it's an indigenous struggle for self-determination that has its own unique culture, own language, own history. And of course then seen as a threat to this invading force. And even Human Rights Watch reinforced many of the points you shared because they pointed out in March 27th and 28th in 2019, 23 Crimean Tatars were arrested. And of course they were labeled as terrorists. And this of course is just a tool that have been happening to indigenous peoples around the world to silence them. But as you point out, the Crimean Tatars are still struggling. And as you shared earlier, when there was that peaceful period, the Crimean Tatars still went to the UN working group on indigenous peoples, to the UN permit forum on indigenous issues and shared and demanded small gains and to continue to build the exercise, their culture. But what you're sharing since 2014 is really a continuation of the genocide that happened before then. Yeah, definitely. Crimean Tatars, yes, since they returned to the peninsula, they asked for rights of self-determination because the Crimean Tatars are only legitimate owners of Crimea because they have been there the longest. They are First Nations of Crimea and they respect the rights of all the other communities there. What they want is they want to protect the environment of Crimea, which is under a lot of danger from Russia right now because Russia is basically turning the peninsula into a military base. There are a lot of weapons and a lot of nuclear weapons also are placed in the peninsula as we watch from the news every day. And the Crimean, Crimea has been going under a drought because of the lack of water because it was getting its water from Ukraine and now all these channels are shut. And Russia has built this bridge and this highway without disregarding the environment or the culture of the people there without consulting them in any ways. And Russia also does not recognize the Crimean Tatars as indigenous people of the Crimea. And they, as far as their concerns, according to their Russian historiography, they recognize Crimea as a Russian land and Crimean Tatars as, prove this successors of the Mongolian Empire. But this is not true. This is like a one-sided reading of history without attending to the historical facts. Yeah, this, because of all this, the Crimean Tatars have been active in the UN mechanisms to defend their rights to self-determination in the international platforms because it wasn't recognized by Russia and it was only recognized by Ukraine after 2014. And the process is also still going very slow with regards to what does the Crimean Tatars of determination mean in Ukraine? What does it entail? What kind of rights? What kind of national cultural autonomy would Crimean Tatars be given after Crimea is liberated from Russia? So these are the main issues for Crimean Tatars right now because it's about their survival. If the Crimean Tatars does not have this right to sovereignty in Crimea, then their culture is in danger. Their language is already an endangered language. So right now, despite the war, it is very important for international bodies and Ukraine to attend the rights of self-determination of the Crimean Tatars because otherwise their survival will be in danger. Thank you so much for the representation of that rainbow of rights that are all being violated, but it is part of a larger wave of oppression against Crimean Tatars that Russia has been doing. We know there's different movements such as Crimean Solidarity that was established in 2016 and other movements. Can you share what's happening today since February 24th with that intensification of the war and as you shared more of a militarization of their homeland and how the Crimean Tatars are really struggling and standing up for their right of self-determination with the current war, but also as you shared that potential for a plural democracy after the liberation where the Crimean Tatars could have a much stronger role in Ukrainian society, but also have greater autonomy and exercise their self-determination? Yeah, after 2014, as I said, there are daily human rights violations. And today, the prison terms of Crimean Tatars, the last number I have is 1,221 years in total. The Crimean Tatars has got prison terms. So one of the important activists, Neri Manjalal, for example, he is the vice president of Crimean Tatar parliament. He recently got 17 years in prison. And just because he's a member of this Mejlis, this Crimean Tatar organization, not that he committed anything violent. 2,000 Mejlis members, you know, local parliament members are pressured every day with their families. There are more than one million illegal court cases against the Crimean Tatars. And there is currently a forced conscription. So the Crimean Tatars are disproportionately conscripted to the Russian army to fight against their own citizens because, you know, there can be Crimean Tatars working, so fighting for Ukraine in the Ukrainian army. And you have Crimean Tatars here forced to fight for Russia. So this is most tragic for any nation because they will have to kill each other, right? Other than that, the Crimean Tatars are not only in Crimea, but who are living in southern Ukraine, which are also under occupation, you know, part of Kherson, part of the Porosia, right? We know at least a hundred of them are kidnapped. We don't know where they're taken, but we know that Russia has this policy of taking them to inside Russia for the camps, which Russia calls filtration camps, right? This is similar to the camps used by China against Uyghur Turks, right? There they are kind of reeducated and, you know, they were interrogated to learn, you know, how loyal they are Ukraine and different FSB tactics are used against them to change their views, change their opinions, right? These are also some of the other pressures against the Crimean Tatars, other challenges that come from the current invasion. And it's horrible to realize how holistic these campaigns of repression are. And as you said, how people are, really, it's a culture of fear to try to make sure that they don't exercise their basic human rights. And for doing just that, of course, then they could face even more hardships. And then the sad part is you're talking about the humanitarian law violations of Russia to force conscription, but then also those rehabilitation camps that have gained greater attention in the media also show that we must stand together to demand an end to these horrible practices by the Russian regime. Yeah, definitely. I think this, I see them as part of another policy of the totalization of Crimea because Russia is in a way trying to force Crimean Tatars to leave Crimea by themselves, right? Increasing the pressure to such level, even threatening to conscript them, right? The Crimean Tatars actually have been leaving Crimea more than they did in 2014. So especially young men who are at the conscription age, they try to escape just like many Russians, we know they escape Russia because they don't want to fight in a war that they don't believe in. So this hybrid deportation, we call this a hybrid deportation, Russia, okay, is not deporting them by putting them into cattle wagons by preparing all the circumstances for them to leave their own, but this is so tragic because if we consider, you know, how much they try to return Crimea, right? The Crimean Tatar leader Mustafa Cemilev, for example, he has suffered in Soviet prisons for 15 years and he had the longest hunger strike in the world, 303 days, and he fell into like 30 kilograms during this hunger strike. And he lost his hearing ability right now, for example, because of that, this leader of Crimean Tatars who is about, you know, 78 years old right now, Russia, after he, you know, but struggled so much to return to homeland and that's why, you know, he undertook this hunger strike. Right now, Russia prohibited Mustafa Cemilev to enter his own homeland, right? And he is in exile in Ukraine right now and trying to, again, trying again to return to their homeland. It's so unjust for the Crimean Tatars to be deprived of their indigenous land. Thank you so much for sharing really that line of liberation, the Crimean Tatars' rich history of always seeking their homeland to be able to exercise their right of self-determination, to speak their language, to have their culture, and to live where their ancestors have, which has been very informative and will keep this important angle of the current Ukraine war in the minds of humanity to make sure that they never forget the Crimean Tatars as we go forward. Thank you for bringing this issue into attention and I would like to say hello to all your viewers. Mahalo, thank you, aloha. Thank you so much for watching Think Tech Hawaii. If you like what we do, please like us and click the subscribe button on YouTube and the follow button on Vimeo. You can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn, and donate to us at thinktechhawaii.com. Mahalo.