The Tatars of the Crimea are a population Turkish living in the area of the Crimea of Ukraine, also dispersed among the republics of old the Soviet Union, the Balkans and the Turkey. Between, they constituted the Khanat of the Crimea, combined with the Othoman , which thrived until falling under the capacity from the Russia.

Tatars of the Crimea were known for frequent incursions and devastators in Ukraine and Russia. In 1571, Tatars of the Crimea took and burned Moscow. For a long time, until the 18th century, Tatars criméens maintained a trade of slaves massive with the Turkey and the Middle East. One of the commercial ports most important and the markets of slaves was Kefe (Caffa). The old assertions making state of more than 3 million people, mainly of the Ukrainian , Russian, Belorusse and Polish, captured and controlled following the incursions of Tatars of the Crimea, are strongly exaggerated. Thus the Polish historian Dziubinski estimates that in XVIe century the number of Slavic sold by Tatars to the Othomans reached on average around a thousand per annum. The English historian Alan Fischer estimates that between 1475 and the end of the 17th century more than one million slaves were taken in Ukraine and Poland and sold in the Crimea. For these effective sales on the markets, it is necessary to add the massacres made for the captures and deaths during transport.

A continuous persecution, with the Crimean War of 1853 and the law of 1860 - 63 and 1874, because an exodus (ethnic Cleaning) of Tatars of the Crimea; much gave up their admirable fields and irrigated gardens and emigrated in the Ottoman Empire (today the Bulgaria, the Romania and the Turkey). Those of the southern part, mixed with the Greek and the Italian , were very known for their knowledge in gardening, their honesty and their practices hard-working. Tatars of mountain resemble much those of the the Caucasus, whereas those of the Steppe (the Nogaïs) are certainly of origin mixed between Mongolian Turks and .

During the Great purgings (in the Years 1930), a whole generation politicians and intellectuals, like Veli İbraimov and Bekir Çoban-zade, were decimated under false charges.

During the Second world war, all the population tatare of the Crimea was victim of Stalinist repression . They were wrongfully shown to be collaborators Nazis and were off-set in mass, like a form of collective Punition, the May 18th 1944 in Central Asia and in the remote areas of the Soviet Union. Many died of disease and malnutrition. Although in 1967 a Soviet decree removed the charges against Tatars of the Crimea, the Soviet government did not do anything to facilitate their reinstalment in the Crimea and to repair the human losses and confiscations of property.

Today, more than 250.000 Tatars are turned over in the Crimea, fighting to restore their lives and to claim their cultural nationality and rights in spite of much of social and economic obstacles.

Tatars of the Crimea supported Viktor Iouchtchenko in the Ukrainian elections of 2004.

Sources