Word: tatar
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Falsely accused by Stalin of mass collaboration with the Nazi German invaders, the entire Crimean Tatar population was loaded onto trains and deported to Central Asia over a period of just three days in May 1944. Almost half would die over the following year. Twenty years since they first began to return, there are over 250,000 Tatars in Crimea, around 13% of the population. (See pictures of Europeans marking the defeat of Nazi Germany...
...Once back, though, the Tatars' troubles were hardly ended. The houses many had once owned or lived in were now occupied by Russian settlers. "I came and saw an old couple living in my parents' house," says Osmanov, standing in the old Tatar quarter of Simferopol, Crimea's capital. "I couldn't have tried to kick them out. What would have been the difference between me doing that and what happened...
...Only babies don't know that Crimean parliamentary deputies are criminals," Hennady Moskal, the Ukrainian president's former representative in Crimea, once remarked. Violent clashes between local law enforcement bodies and Tatar settlers have occurred in the past. Tensions over Yani Qirim threatened to boil over in January, when inhabitants say they got word of a police decision to storm the settlement, and 3,000 Tatars set up camp for several days to offer protection. "We will defend our homes and families," says Khalilov. And not only from the police. In 2007, Ukranian media reported that representatives of the developer...
...Descendents of the Mongol armies that swept through what is now southern Russia and Ukraine in the 13th century, the Muslim Tatar khans ruled the Crimean peninsula until it was annexed by Russia in 1783. A summer holiday destination during the Soviet period and still home to Russia's Black Sea Fleet, many Russians see Crimea as part of their country, a fact that rankles the Tatars...
...land is far from their only problem. While local Russians often speak of respect for the Tatars' entrepreneurial skills and work ethic, Khalilov says he has been turned away from job interviews when they see he is a Tatar. "I'm not racist, but I wouldn't take them on," says Volodymyr, a retired Russian sailor and local business owner who declined to give his last name...