In late February 2014, just a few days before what became known as the ‘Crimean Spring’, several thousand Crimean Tatars assembled under Crimean Tatar and Ukrainian flags for a rally in the regional capital Simferopol. One of the speakers, mufti Emirali Ablayev, railed at those who supported the peninsula’s reunification with Russia.
‘Is Vladimir Konstantinov [a central figure in the regional government, one of the first to suggest the peninsula could secede from Ukraine – ed.] planning to hand our great motherland over to Russia?’ asked Ablayev. ‘I say to Konstantinov: if he loves Russia so much and wants to live there, we can give him one of the railway trucks that took our grandfathers to Central Asia when they were deported by Stalin in 1944, and God help him. Let him clear off to Russia, and take those Russians who have occupied in our families’ homes with him.’
The crowd received Ablayev’s speech enthusiastically. The Crimean Tatars spent half a century in exile before being allowed to return home to Crimea, and have come to see Russia, the successor to the USSR, as responsible for this terrible tragedy. It’s unsurprising they’ve been opposed to the peninsula’s annexation, but their religious organisations have had a far more difficult game to play.
