Three years ago, on August 2, 2015, the second World Congress of the Crimean Tatar People ended in Ankara, Turkey. During the congress, and in the face of the Russian invasion of Crimea, the Tatars demonstrated their resolve, why they are a real asset for Ukraine, and why its movement, which the Kremlin has tried so hard to disrupt, represents a large and growing problem for Moscow, noted Paul Goble in his analysis.
Kyiv commentator Andrey Strelets said on Novy Region-2 that the latest meeting showed that the Crimean Tatars would increase activity in pushing their arguments to resonate internationally.
The first congress of Crimean Tatars took place in 2009, but was unable to ratify its charter until the latest meeting in 2015, creating the World Congress of Crimean Tatars. The body is tasked with promoting at the international level the rights, powers and aspirations of the national Qurultay and national Mejlis, both of which have faced difficulties in working under a Russian occupation of the Crimean Tatar homeland but who are the unique articulators of the position of the Crimean Tatar people.
Notably, the congress adopted a declaration stating that the “the right to self-determination belongs to the indigenous Crimean Tatar people.” Crimea must be freed as soon as possible from the Russian occupation, it must be returned to Ukraine, and the Crimean Tatars have the right to decide their own fate, the congress declared.
The congress also called on the international community to recognize that “the actions of Russia in Crimea are a genocide, beginning from the moment of the inclusion of the peninsula in the Russian Empire in 1783 up to the present day.” Since that period, “more than a million and a half Crimean Tatars were forced to leave their motherland,” and half of those deported in 1944 by Stalin died as a result.
What is most important, Mr. Strelets underscored, was the context of these declarations rather than the content: “the shameful Russian veto on the U.N. Security Council resolution calling for the establishment of an international tribunal to investigate the causes of the crash of the Malaysian Boeing [MH17], the judicial controversies around the murder of [Alexander] Litvinenko, the new sanctions of the U.S., the seizures of Russian property abroad, and the participation of the Russian Federation in the war in the Donbas.”
The Kremlin talking points of comparing Crimea to Kosovo did not hold water, Mr. Strelets continued, as no one joined Kosovo to Albania, but rather Kosovo remained independent.
Mr. Goble noted: “As it has done so often elsewhere, Moscow has sought to use its own agents and ‘useful idiots’ among Crimean Tatars to argue its case. But as ‘people of the older generation remember,’ Moscow set up the Anti-Zionist Committee of Soviet Society to oppose Jewish emigration from the USSR. These pocket Crimean Tatar group are only a new iteration of that.”
Mr. Strelets suggested that the most important fact is that the Crimean Tatars will never want to be part of the Russian Federation even if by some miracle the economic disaster there were to be overcome. They associate Russia today with the USSR and the Russian Empire, and those associations are anything but good.
This year, President Vladimir Putin during the press conference at the U.S.-Russia Summit in Helsinki, stated: “We held a referendum in Crimea.” That Russian-orchestrated vote in 2014 followed Russia’s military invasion and seizure of the peninsula. The admission was not lost on keen observers, who said this was additional legal ammunition against Russia’s actions and an admission of Russia’s involvement.
Source: “Why Crimean Tatars are such an asset for Ukraine and a problem for Moscow,” by Paul Goble, (Windows on Eurasia), The Ukrainian Weekly, August 9, 2015.