Paul
Goble
Staunton, November 27 – The Tatars,
both Crimean and Kazan, are two of the small group of nations on the territory
of the former Soviet space that is actively committed to the expansion of
democracy and other Western values, and so it is no surprise that each of them
has declared itself in support of a European choice for Ukraine.
The Crimean Tatars are the most directly
involved because a major part of their community lives within the boundaries of
Ukraine. (The remainder is in exile in Central Asia.) Over the last few days,
hundreds of Crimean Tatars went to Kyiv to take part in pro-Europe
demonstrations (qha.com.ua/krimskie-tatari-otpravilis-na-evromaidan-v-kiev-131606.html).
Those who made the trip did so on an
individual basis, but before they left, they asked representatives of the Mejlis
for Crimean Tatar and Ukrainian flags to carry. Members of the Mejlis expressed
their support for this effort. Once they arrived in the Ukrainian capital, they
linked up with the Crimean Tatar organization in Kyiv.
One Muslim leader on the peninsula
said that their participation in the Maidan represents “a major plus not only
for the Mejlis of the Crimean Tatar people but also for Ukraine” because it
shows that] there is such firm support for democratic values in society.” He
added that he “personally” had been inspired by this.
Before the Crimean Tatars left for
Kyiv, they organized a demonstration under the banner of “I choose the EU” in
Simferopol/Akmesdzhite on the lines of those which took place throughout
Ukraine.
Meanwhile, leaders of the Kazan
Tatar nationalist movement released a statement in support of a European choice
for Ukraine. They said that they wanted
to express solidarity with all Ukrainians who “want to live in a free,
European, and democratic state” and with Yuliya Timoshenko who has declared a
hunger strike (tatar-centr.blogspot.com/2013/11/blog-post_8478.html).
The Kazan Tatar leaders said that
they considered “the most important task of the Ukrainian people at the present
moment” to be “the struggle for national and social liberation, for the construction
of a genuinely independent Ukrainian national state and against the enslavement
in whatever form of one people by another.”
History
shows, the Kazan Tatars said that “only an independent Ukrainian state will secure
the Ukrainian people the best conditions for its all-sided spiritual and
material development and that only such a state can be a reliable guarantee of
a genuinely free, really happy, and well-off life for the Ukrainian people.”
Among
the signatories of this declaration are Raif Galiyev, the president of the
Council of Elders of Tatartan, Fauziya Bayramova, the president of the Milli
Mejlis of the Kazan Tatar, Rafis Kashapov, the president of TatarSocial Center,
Nail Nabiullin, president of Azatlyk, Ayrat Shakir, the imam of the Tatar
national movement, Nafiz Kashapov, a Kazan Tatar émigré in Kyiv, and Farit
Rakhimov, president of the Tatar Teachers Association.
Some
may be inclined to dismiss these moves as simply efforts by small groups of
people to call attention to themselves by exploiting the events in Kyiv, but
that would be a mistake. Both the
Crimean Tatars and the Kazan Tatars have been consistent in their pro-European
stance, something that makes their support worth having whatever happens in
Kyiv.
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