Origin The Crimean Tatars were formed as a people in
Crimea and are descendants of various peoples who lived in Crimea in different historical eras. The main ethnic groups that inhabited the Crimea at various times and took part in the formation of the Crimean Tatar people are
Tauri,
Scythians,
Sarmatians,
Alans,
Ancient Greeks,
Crimean Goths,
Huns,
Bulgars,
Khazars,
Pechenegs,
Cumans, and
Italians. The consolidation of this diverse ethnic conglomerate into a single Crimean Tatar people took place over the course of centuries. The connecting elements in this process were the commonality of the territory, the Turkic language and
Islamic religion. Over several centuries, on the basis of
Cuman language with a noticeable
Oghuz influence, the
Crimean Tatar language has developed.
In the Golden Horde — one of the oldest mosques of the Crimea. It was built in 1314 during the rule of the Golden Horde in the peninsula At the beginning of the 13th century in Crimea, the majority of the population, which was already composed of a
Turkic people — Cumans — became a part of the
Golden Horde. The Crimean Tatars mostly adopted Islam in the 14th century and thereafter Crimea became one of the centers of Islamic civilization in Eastern Europe. In the same century, trends towards separatism appeared in the Crimean Ulus of the Golden Horde. De facto independence of the Crimea from the Golden Horde may be counted since the beginning of princess (khanum)
Canike's, the daughter of the powerful Khan of the Golden Horde
Tokhtamysh and the wife of the founder of the
Nogai Horde Edigey, reign in the peninsula. During her reign she strongly supported
Hacı Giray in the struggle for the Crimean throne until her death in 1437. Following the death of Canike, the situation of Hacı Giray in Crimea weakened and he was forced to leave Crimea for Lithuania. The Crimean Tatars emerged as a nation at the time of the
Crimean Khanate, an
Ottoman vassal state during the 16th to 18th centuries. The Turkic-speaking population of Crimea had mostly adopted Islam already in the 14th century, following the conversion of
Ozbeg Khan of the
Golden Horde. By the time of the first Russian invasion of Crimea in 1736, the Khan's archives and libraries were famous throughout the Islamic world, and under Khan
Krym-Girei the city of
Aqmescit was endowed with piped water, sewerage and a theatre where
Molière was performed in French, while the port of
Kezlev stood comparison with
Rotterdam and
Bakhchysarai, the capital, was described as Europe's cleanest and greenest city.
In the Crimean Khanate by
Carlo Bossoli In 1441, an embassy from the representatives of several strongest clans of the Crimea, including the Golden Horde clans Shırın and Barın and the Cumanic clan — Kıpçak, went to the
Grand Duchy of Lithuania to invite Hacı Giray to rule in the Crimea. He became the founder of the
Giray dynasty, which ruled until the annexation of the Crimean Khanate by Russia in 1783. Since then, the Crimean Khanate was among the strongest powers in Eastern Europe until the beginning of the 18th century. The Khanate officially operated as a vassal state of the
Ottoman Empire, with great autonomy after 1580. At the same time, the Nogai hordes, not having their own khan, were vassals of the Crimean one,
Muskovy and
Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth paid annual tribute to the khan (until
1700 and
1699 respectively). In the 17th century, the Crimean Tatars helped
Ukrainian Cossacks led by
Bohdan Khmelnytsky in the struggle for independence, which allowed them to win several decisive victories over Polish troops. performing
namaz. In 1711, when
Peter I of Russia went on a
campaign with all his troops (80,000) to gain access to the Black Sea, he was surrounded by the army of the Crimean Khan
Devlet II Giray, finding himself in a hopeless situation. And only the betrayal of the Ottoman vizier
Baltacı Mehmet Pasha allowed Peter to get out of the encirclement of the Crimean Tatars. When Devlet II Giray protested against the vizier's decision, his response was:
"You should know your Tatar affairs. The affairs of the Sublime Porte are entrusted to me. You do not have the right to interfere in them".
Treaty of the Pruth was signed, and 10 years later, Russia declared itself an empire. In 1736, the Crimean Khan
Qaplan I Giray was summoned by the Turkish Sultan
Ahmed III to
Persia. Understanding that Russia could take advantage of the lack of troops in Crimea, Qaplan Giray wrote to the Sultan to think twice, but the Sultan was persistent. As it was expected by Qaplan Giray, in
1736 the Russian army invaded the Crimea, led by
Münnich, devastated the peninsula, killed civilians and destroyed all major cities, occupied the capital,
Bakhchisaray, and burnt the
Khan's palace with all the archives and documents, and then left the Crimea because of the epidemic that had begun in it. One year after the same was done by another Russian general —
Peter Lacy. Since then, the Crimean Khanate had not been able to recover, and its slow decline began. The
Russo-Turkish War of 1768 to 1774 resulted in the defeat of the Ottomans by the Russians, and according to the
Treaty of Küçük Kaynarca (1774) signed after the war, Crimea became independent and the Ottomans renounced their political right to protect the Crimean Khanate. After a period of political unrest in Crimea,
Imperial Russia violated the treaty and
annexed the Crimean Khanate in 1783. The main population of the Crimean Khanate were Crimean Tatars, along with them in the Crimean Khanate lived significant communities of
Karaites,
Italians,
Armenians,
Greeks,
Circassians and
Roma. In the early 16th century a part of
Nogays (Mangyts), who roamed outside the
Crimean Peninsula, moving there during periods of drought and starvation, passed under the rule of the Crimean khans. The majority of the population professed Islam of the Hanafi stream; part of the population – Orthodox, Monotheletism, Judaism; in the 16th century. There were small Catholic communities. The Crimean Tatar population of the Crimean Peninsula was partially exempt from taxes. The Greeks paid
jizya, the Italians were in a privileged position due to the partial tax relief made during the reign of
Meñli Geray I. By the 18th century the population of the Crimea (excluding continental territories of the Khanate) was about 500 thousand people. The territory of the Crimean Khanate was divided into
qaymaqams (governorships), which consisted of
qadılıqs, covering a number of settlements.
Nogay slave trade (15th–18th centuries) Until the beginning of the 18th century, the Crimean Nogays were known for frequent, at some periods almost annual,
slave raids into present-day 'mainland' Ukraine and Russia. For a long time, until the late 18th century, the Crimean Khanate maintained
a massive slave trade with the Ottoman Empire and the Middle East which was one of the important factors of its economy. One of the most important trading ports and slave markets was
Kefe. According to the Ottoman census of 1526, taxes on the sale and purchase of slaves accounted for 24% of the funds, levied in Ottoman Crimea for all activities. But in fact, there were always small raids committed by both Tatars and
Cossacks, in both directions. The 17th century Ottoman writer and traveller
Evliya Çelebi wrote that there were 920,000 Ukrainian slaves in the Crimea but only 187,000 free Muslims. Russian professor Glagolev writes that there were 1.800.000 free Crimean Tatars in the Crimean Khanate in 1666, it also should be mentioned that a huge part of Ukraine was part of the Crimean Khanate, that is why Ukrainians could have been taken into account in the general population of the Khanate by Evliya (see
Khan Ukraine). Some researchers estimate that more than 2 million people were captured and enslaved during the time of the Crimean Khanate. Polish historian Bohdan Baranowski assumed that in the 17th century
Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth (present-day
Poland,
Ukraine,
Lithuania and
Belarus) lost an average of 20,000 yearly and as many as one million in all years combined from 1500 to 1644. One of the most famous victims of the Tatar slave trade was a young woman from
Ruthenia, captured during her wedding who came to be known as
Roxelana (Hürrem Sultan), a concubine of
Sultan Suleiman. In retaliation, the lands of Crimean Tatars were being raided by
Zaporozhian Cossacks, The last recorded major Crimean raid, before those in the
Russo-Turkish War (1768–74) took place during the reign of
Peter the Great (1682–1725). According to modern researches, livestock occupied a leading position in the economy of the Crimean Khanate, Crimean Khanate was one of the main wheat suppliers to the Ottoman Empire. Salt mining, viticulture and winemaking, horticulture and gardening were also developed as sources of income.
In the Russian Empire , showing mostly Turkic placenames. The Russo-Turkish War (1768–1774) resulted in the defeat of the Ottomans by the Russians, and according to the
Treaty of Küçük Kaynarca (1774) signed after the war, Crimea became independent and the Ottomans renounced their political right to protect the Crimean Khanate. After a period of political unrest in Crimea, Russia violated the treaty and
annexed the Crimean Khanate in 1783. After the annexation, the wealthier Tatars, who had exported wheat, meat, fish and wine to other parts of the Black Sea, began to be expelled and to move to the
Ottoman Empire. Due to the oppression by the Russian administration and colonial politics of Russian Empire, the Crimean Tatars were forced to immigrate to the Ottoman Empire. Further expulsions followed in 1812 for fear of the reliability of the Tatars in the face of Napoleon's advance. Particularly, the
Crimean War of 1853–1856, the laws of 1860–63, the Tsarist policy and the
Russo-Turkish War (1877–1878) caused an exodus of the Tatars; 12,000 boarded Allied ships in Sevastopol to escape the destruction of shelling, and were branded traitors by the Russian government. Many Crimean Tatars perished in the process of emigration, including those who drowned while crossing the Black Sea. In total, from 1783 till the beginning of the 20th century, at least 800,000 Tatars left Crimea. Today the descendants of these Crimeans form the
Crimean Tatar diaspora in Bulgaria, Romania and Turkey.
Ismail Gasprali (1851–1914) was a renowned Crimean Tatar intellectual, influenced by the nationalist movements of the period, whose efforts laid the foundation for the modernization of Muslim culture and the emergence of the Crimean Tatar national identity. The bilingual Crimean Tatar-Russian newspaper
Terciman-Perevodchik he published in 1883–1914, functioned as an educational tool through which a national consciousness and modern thinking emerged among the entire Turkic-speaking population of the
Russian Empire. File:Caffa in ruins.jpg|
Caffa in ruins (1788) after Russian annexation of Crimea File:Tragedy of Qarasuvbazar.jpg|Abandoned houses in
Qarasuvbazar. File:Танец крымских татар, 1790-е годы.jpg|The Crimean Tatar national dance,
Qaytarma (1790s) File:Крымскотатарский эскадрон.jpg|Crimean Tatar squadron of the Russian Empire (1850) File:Lucznik tatarski.jpg|Crimean Tatar archer (Wacław Pawliszak, 1890) File:Kurultay of the Crimean Tatar People (1917).jpg|Kurultay of the Crimean Tatar People, 1917
In the Soviet Union (1917–1991) after the deportation. 1944, Molotov region, RSFSR As a part of the
Russian famine of 1921 the Peninsula suffered widespread starvation. and tens of thousands of Tatars fled to Turkey or Romania. Thousands more were deported or killed during the
collectivization in 1928–29. During
Stalin's
Great Purge, statesmen and intellectuals such as
Veli İbraimov and
Bekir Çoban-zade were imprisoned or executed on various charges. This belief is based in part on an analogy with numerous other cases of
deportations of non-Russians from boundary territories, as well as the fact that other non-Russian populations, such as
Greeks,
Armenians and
Bulgarians were also removed from Crimea (see
Deportation of the peoples inhabiting Crimea). All 240,000 Crimean Tatars were
deported en masse, in a form of
collective punishment, on 17–18 May 1944 as
"special settlers" to the
Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic and other distant parts of the
Soviet Union. This event is called
Sürgün in the
Crimean Tatar language; the few who escaped were shot on sight or drowned in scuttled barges, and within months half their number had died of cold, hunger, exhaustion and disease.
Civil rights movement Starting in 1944, Crimean Tatars lived mostly in Central Asia with the designation as "special settlers", meaning that they had few rights. "Special settlers" were forbidden from leaving small designated areas and had to frequently sign in at a commandant's office. Soviet propaganda directed towards Uzbeks depicted Crimean Tatars as threats to their homeland, and as a result there were many documented hate crimes against Crimean-Tatar civilians by Uzbek Communist loyalists. In the 1950s the "special settler" regime ended, but Crimean Tatars were still kept closely tethered to Central Asia; while other deported ethnic groups like the
Chechens,
Karachays, and
Kalmyks were fully allowed to return to their native lands during the Khrushchev thaw, economic and political reasons combined with basic misconceptions and stereotypes about Crimean Tatars led to Moscow and Tashkent being reluctant to allow Crimean Tatars the same right of return; the same decree that rehabilitated other deported nations and restored their national republics urged Crimean Tatars who wanted a national republic to seek "national reunification" in the Tatar ASSR in lieu of restoration of the Crimean ASSR, much to the dismay of Crimean Tatars who bore no connection to or desire to "return" to Tatarstan. Moscow's refusal to allow a return was not only based on a desire to satisfy the new Russian settlers in Crimea, who were very hostile to the idea of a return and had been subject to lots of Tatarophobic propaganda, but for economic reasons: high productivity from Crimean Tatar workers in Central Asia meant that letting the diaspora return would take a toll on Soviet industrialization goals in Central Asia. A
1967 Soviet decree removed the charges against Crimean Tatars on paper while simultaneously referring to them not by their proper ethnonym but by the euphemism that eventually became standard of "citizens of Tatar nationality who formerly lived in Crimea", angering many Crimean Tatars who realized it meant they were not even seen as Crimean Tatars by the government. In addition, the Soviet government did nothing to facilitate their resettlement in Crimea and to make reparations for lost lives and confiscated property. Before the mass return in the perestroika era, Crimean Tatars made up only 1.5% of Crimea's population, since government entities at all levels took a variety of measures beyond the already-debilitating residence permit system to keep them in Central Asia. The abolition of the special settlement regime made it possible for Crimean Tatar rights activists to mobilize. The primary method of raising grievances with the government was petitioning. Many for the right of return gained over 100,000 signatures; although other methods of protest were occasionally used, the movement remained completely non-violent. When only a small percentage of Crimean Tatars were allowed to return to Crimea, those who were not granted residence permits would return to Crimea and try to live under the radar. However, the lack of a residence permit resulted in a second deportation for them. A last-resort method to avoid a second deportation was self-immolation, famously used by Crimean Tatar national hero
Musa Mamut, one of those who moved to Crimea without a residence permit. He doused himself with gasoline and committed self-immolation in front of police trying to deport him on 23 June 1978. Mamut died of severe burns several days later, but expressed no regret for having committed self-immolation. Other notable self-immolations in the name of the Crimean Tatar right of return movement include that of Shavkat Yarullin, who fatally committed self-immolation in front of a government building in protest in October 1989, and Seidamet Balji who attempted self-immolation while being deported from Crimea in December that year but survived. Many other famous Crimean Tatars threatened government authorities with self-immolation if they continued to be ignored, including
Hero of the Soviet Union Abdraim Reshidov. In the later years of the Soviet Union, Crimean Tatar activists held picket protests in Red Square. Gromyko's condescending attitude and failure to assure them that they would have the right of return ended up concerning members of the Crimean Tatar civil rights movement. In June 1988 he issued an official statement that rejected the request for re-establishment of a Crimean Tatar autonomy in Crimea and supported only allowing an organized return of a few more Crimean Tatars, while agreeing to allow the lower-priority requests of having more publications and school instruction in the Crimean Tatar language at the local level among areas with the deported populations. The conclusion that "no basis to renew autonomy and grant Crimean Tatars the right to return" triggered widespread protests. Less than two years after Gromyko's commission had rejected their request for autonomy and return, pogroms against the deported
Meskhetian Turks were taking place in Central Asia. During the pogroms, some Crimean Tatars were targeted as well, resulting in changing attitudes towards allowing Crimean Tatars to move back to Crimea. Eventually a second commission, chaired by
Gennady Yanaev and inclusive of Crimean Tatars on the board, was established in 1989 to reevaluate the issue, and it was decided that the deportation was illegal and the Crimean Tatars were granted the full right to return, revoking previous laws intended to make it as difficult as possible for Crimean Tatars to move to Crimea.
In independent Ukraine (1991–2014) Today, more than 250,000 Crimean Tatars have returned to their homeland, struggling to re-establish their lives and reclaim their national and cultural rights against many social and economic obstacles. One-third of them are atheists, and over half that consider themselves religious are non-observant. As of 2009, only 15 out of 650 schools in Crimea provided education in the Crimean Tatar language, and 13 of them only do so in the first three grades.
Squatting in Crimea has been a significant method for Crimean Tatars to rebuild communities in Crimea destroyed by the deportations. These squats have sometimes resulted in violence by Crimean Russians, such as the 1992 Krasny Ray events, in which the security forces of the separatist
Republic of Crimea (not to be confused with the post-2014 government of the same name) attacked a Crimean Tatar squat near the village of Krasny Ray. As a result of the attack on the Krasny Ray settlement, Crimean Tatars stormed the
Verkhovna Rada of Crimea, leading to the release of 26 squatters who had been abducted by the Crimean security forces. , 2014 Crimean Tatars were recognised as an indigenous people by the 1996
Constitution of Ukraine, and granted a limited number of seats in the
1994 Crimean parliamentary election. Nonetheless, they faced constant discrimination from the authorities of the
Autonomous Republic of Crimea, which was primarily governed by ethnic Russians and directed towards Russian interests.
2014 annexation of Crimea by the Russian Federation (Ukrainian flag on the left, Crimean Tatar flag on the right) during the Russian military intervention in Crimea, March 2014 Following news of Crimea's independence
referendum, organized under the auspices of Russia on 16 March 2014, the Kurultai leadership voiced concerns about renewed persecution, as commented by a U.S. official before the visit of a U.N. human rights team to the peninsula. At the same time,
Rustam Minnikhanov, the president of
Tatarstan was dispatched to Crimea to quell Crimean Tatars' concerns and to state that "in the 23 years of Ukraine's independence the Ukrainian leaders have been using Crimean Tatars as pawns in their political games without doing them any tangible favors". The issue of Crimean Tatar persecution by Russia has since been raised regularly on an international level. On 18 March 2014, the day Crimea was annexed by Russia, Crimean Tatar was
de jure declared one of the three official languages of Crimea. It was also announced that Crimean Tatars would be required to relinquish coastal lands on which they had squatted since their return to Crimea in the early 1990s and be given land elsewhere in Crimea. Crimea stated it needed the relinquished land for "social purposes", since part of this land is occupied by the Crimean Tatars without legal documents of ownership. The situation was caused by the inability of the USSR (and later Ukraine) to sell the land to Crimean Tatars at a reasonable price instead of giving back to the Tatars the land owned before deportation, once they or their descendants returned from Central Asia (mainly Uzbekistan). As a consequence, some Crimean Tatars settled as squatters, occupying land that was and is still not legally registered. Some Crimean Tatars fled to Mainland
Ukraine due to the annexation of Crimea – reportedly around 2,000 by 23 March. On 29 March 2014, an emergency meeting of the Crimean Tatars representative body, the
Kurultai, voted in favor of seeking "ethnic and territorial autonomy" for Crimean Tatars using "political and legal" means. The meeting was attended by the Head of the
Republic of Tatarstan and the chair of the
Russian Council of Muftis. Decisions as to whether the Tatars will accept Russian passports or whether the autonomy sought would be within the Russian or Ukrainian state have been deferred pending further discussion. , the Mejlis worked in emergency mode in
Kyiv. After the annexation of Crimea by the Russian Federation, Crimean Tatars were persecuted and discriminated by Russian authorities, including cases of
torture,
arbitrary detentions,
forced disappearances by Russian
security forces and courts. On 12 June 2018, Ukraine lodged a
memorandum consisting of 17,500 pages of text in 29 volumes to the UN's
International Court of Justice about
racial discrimination against Crimean Tatars by Russian authorities in occupied Crimea and state financing of terrorism by Russian Federation in
Donbas. In May 2024,
Mustafa Dzhemilev announced that at least 41 Crimean Tatars had died fighting for Russia in the
Russian invasion of Ukraine, 22 of which were convicts, 13 a result of Russian mobilisation and 6 as volunteers. ==Distribution==