Tatars of Middle Volga Look to Afghanistan where Their Nation Already has Status of ‘a State-Forming People’

Paul Goble

            Staunton, July 18 – Many Tatars remain outraged that Putin has called only the ethnic Russians “the state-forming people” in the Russian Federation, but they now have a chance to protest that Kremlin decision in an unexpected way: by boosting a conference in Afghanistan where the Tatars have the status they don’t have in the Russian Federation.

            The first institutional conference on the preservation of the Tatar language and the culture of the Tatar nation will take place in the near future in the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan where the Tatars have the status of a state-forming nation, the Union of Tatars of Afghanistan says (milliard.tatar/news/v-afganistane-proidet-mezdunarodnaya-konferenciya-o-spasenii-tatarskogo-yazyka-7853).

            Zabikhullo Naderi Tatar says that the Tatars of Afghanistan are proud of that status and “actively indicate their nation in passports and in birth certificates. Our children study Tatar in schools and we carry out competitions for the preservation of Tatar culture.” And Tatar businessmen in that country help out one another.

            Rustam Khabibullin, the head of the Russian Business Center in Afghanistan, confirms that the meeting will take place in the near future and notes that cooperation between Kabul and the Academy of Sciences of the Republic of Tatarstan is now at an official level and expanding as a result.

            Putin’s decision to promote the idea of the ethnic Russians alone as “the state-forming people” of Russia thus may thus be backfiring and in a most unexpected place, one where what the Kremlin has done will not only encourage the Tatars of the Middle Volga to claim this status too but also to work with an Islamic country to make it happen.