Paul
Goble
Staunton, June 26 – Only 5,000 of
the 300,000 Crimean Tatars living in the Russian-occupied peninsula have
applied for Russian passports over the last ten days, according to the Russian
official there responsible for nationality affairs. That figure reflects the
steadfast opposition of the Crimean Tatars to the Russian Anschluss.
These officials say that
applications are coming in at the rate of 200 to 300 a day, figures that if
they continued at that level would mean that it would be more than three years
before the transfer from Ukrainian to Russian passports would be completed (nazaccent.ru/content/12150-stat-grazhdanami-rf-zahotelo-pyat.html).
The Milli
Mejlis, the assembly of the Crimean Tatars, has spoken out against the
Anschluss and against exchanging Ukrainian citizenship for Russian citizenship,
positions that make it likely that the rate of application for Russian passports
is more likely to fall rather than increase in the coming months.
That has both good and bad
consequences. The good consequences are
that this is a clear demonstration of the loyalty Crimean Tatars feel toward
Ukraine and of their hostility to the forcible annexation of their homeland by the
Russian Federation. They will thus remain an inspiration to other Ukrainians
and to all those who want Russian aggression reversed.
But the bad consequences are likely to
be visited directly on the Crimean Tatars themselves. Mustafa Cemilev, their longtime leader, has
already been banned from returning to his homeland for five years. Crimean Tatar schools and mosques have been
attacked. And Russian officials have begun questioning the titles Crimean
Tatars have for their property.
Most recently, and despite all the
promises Vladimir Putin made before the referendum on the Anschluss, Russian
officials have now ordered the taking down of all place and street signs in
Crimean Tatar and English on the peninsula because these officials say the
Crimean Tatars “don’t deserve them” (turkist.org/2014/06/crimea-english.html).
Moreover,
Russian officials have played up the status of other minorities on the
peninsula like the Armenians and Greeks in recent weeks, thus implicitly
downplaying that historical and contemporary role of the Crimean Tatars whose
homeland the peninsula has been for centuries (nazaccent.ru/content/12146-v-den-70-letiya-deportacii-armyan-grekov.html).
Talk
about expelling Crimean Tatars who don’t accept Russian citizenship has quieted
in recent weeks, but another and perhaps more real threat has emerged. Roman Silantyev, a Russian specialist on
Islam who is close to the Moscow Patriarchate and the Kremlin, said yesterday
that Russia should not give citizenship to “the Islamists of Crimea” (interfax-religion.ru/islam/?act=news&div=55706).
Such an appeal, if heard, opens the
way not only to increasing oppression of all Muslims there because in Russian
parlance, a Muslim extremist is any Muslim Moscow does not approve of, but also
to what could become a dangerous propaganda effort.
If the Russian occupation authorities
say they will not give citizenship to “extremist Muslims,” it will be very easy
for Russian propagandists and those who rely on them to conclude that those
Crimean Tatars who do not take citizenship are thus by a twist of logic “extremist
Muslims.”
On the one hand, such suggestions are
likely to be used to pressure additional Crimean Tatars to apply for Russian
citizenship. And on the other – and this
is more likely and more serious – they are likely to be used to try to blacken
the reputation of the Crimean Tatars as a whole and thus reduce support for
that community internationally.
At the very least, recent Russian
actions and the possibility that Russian officials will move in this direction
increase the likelihood of conflicts between the Crimean Tatars and the
occupation authorities and the danger that these will be presented by
pro-Moscow media as a clash of civilizations between Muslims and Christians.
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