Crimean Tatars

We've reiterated multiple times that no matter how pro-neutrality or maybe even pro-Russia or pro-multipolarity that Erdogan may seem.

He's always maintained that Ukraine should control Crimea, and he's even invoked the ridiculous narrative of oppressed ethnic minority Crimean Tatars to reinforce that.

But apparently in response, and I think Dmitry has a few more details about the originator of these posts than me.

But after Erdogan's speech and after silly comments about Turkey's refusal to recognize Crimea, apparently we had some pro-Russian members of the community talking about liberation campaigns against Constantinople.

It's like, oh, the Russian Empire, obviously, it conquered these territories and took them from the native peoples.

Although, keep in mind, these territories were originally orthodox prior to even the Khazarian invaders, prior to the invaders from the steppes that took them over, and prior to even the invasion of any Muslim people's period.

So the Crimean Tatars are invaders from Central Asia.

There was no Crimean Tatars living on the Crimean Peninsula during, for example, even the Byzantine period or when St. Andrew the Apostle was first evangelizing all of these areas.

Since the 1700s, Russia had pursued a policy of southward expansion toward the warm water ports of the Black Sea, which do not freeze over during the winter.

This push for year-round trade and a year-round navy led to conflicts with the Cossacks, the Crimean Tatars, and the Circassians.

Catherine the Great had commissioned the colonization of New Russia on the northern Black Sea coast in Sebsen-100-Seksen-Zipsik, which removed the Ottoman buffer zone and brought the two empires into direct conflict.

Religion was also a central issue, as Russia saw itself as the defender of Orthodox Christians living under Ottoman rule.

uh so they have a pretty good position as far as that and there there is no persecution of jews qua jews in the post-soviet era but there is a strong crackdown uh after the break with israel on political zionists particularly those who are actively petitioning to emigrate out of the ussr to go to Israel.

But again, when you look at total number of arrests, total number of incarcerations, we're only talking a few hundred people, which puts it on about the same par as much smaller groups that were doing the same type of thing, such as the Crimean Tatars, who had only one-tenth the total population that the Jews had.

Yeah, that reminded me of something I wanted to ask, just going back.

So 1948, you have the foundation of Israel.

I have a Patreon.

It hasn't been too active recently because I haven't been doing anything regarding it for a while since I've been working a physical labor job.

Currently, I have an article I'll be writing for a yearbook of the Ukrainian Studies Institute at University of Wroclaw in Poland on Crimean Tatars, their deportation 80 years ago.

My last academic publication was at the end of last year it was a chapter in a book on uh russian germans uh on four continents i again wrote about germans deported to kazakhstan but my email uh j auto j.autopole at gmail.com is connected to my paypal if anybody interested in sending me any money if they really want to but uh uh the big thing uh for why i i would like to come on as many shows as possible right now is uh my book has not done as well the last two years as i i thought it should so uh not that i care too much about the money from it but i'd like uh people to at least read it uh and uh since i spent uh Probably better chunk of more than 10 years doing all the research while I was in Kyrgyzstan and even Ghana and Iraq.

Descendants of the Khazars were the Kumiks in the Caucasus.

In the Cr- in the Crimea, on the other hand, they combined with the Polov- Polovtsi nomadic Turkish branch from, branch from Central Asia in the northern Black Sea area and the Caucasus since the tenth century, called Cuman by Western historians, second map is here, to form the Crimean Tatars.

But the Karaim, a Jewish sect that does not follow the Talmud, and Jewish residents of the Crimean did not go over to the Muslim faith.

The Khazars were finally conquered by Tamerlane, much later by Tamerlane or Timur, the fourteenth-century conqueror.

And it happens a lot with trauma narratives.

For example, Greta Uhling does research on Crimean Tatars.

She says that this kind of collective psyche and this collective memory influences your own retelling of those stories, even if you yourself didn't experience it personally.

So it probably happened at a certain point, but the exact circumstances and the exact location and the exact acting parties, we'll probably never know.

You put people in situations.

There was a great interview Arkady Ostrovsky did with, um, um, Khakma- Chulpan Khakmatova, the Russian, uh, uh, Russian Crimean Tatar actress who had a project years ago that she was taking care of child cancer patients.

She had created a hospital for them or some kind of home or a structure, um, and she was supporting these kids, and in fact had kind of thought of them all as her kids.

Mm-hmm.