Abstract
Following Nabers’ seminal work that establishes a “missing link” between crises and transformations, this study focuses on the changes in the Crimean Tatar discourses about Crimean Tatar identity, crises, and Russian and Ukrainian “Others” with a special emphasis on the question of national self-determination. It suggests that a discursive shift of emphasis from the “Deportation crisis” to “Annexation crisis” among Crimean Tatars operates as a “myth” to deal with the inherent divide within the Tatar political movement and conceals the ongoing “hegemonic struggles” over the Crimean Tatar identity and its political representation. Exploring the multiplicity of discourses about Crimean Tatar self-determination, the study emphasizes the need to trace the universalizing and particularizing processes through which Crimean Tatar subjectivities are reconstructed.
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Notes
- 1.
A Muslim indigenous population of Crimea who speaks Turkic language and who faced mass deportation many times since the nineteenth century. Around 250,000 Crimean Tatars returned to Crimea after the dissolution of the Soviet Union (13% of the Crimean population before the Russian annexation). More than two million Crimean Tatars currently live in Turkey.
- 2.
Meyer and Jepperson (2000) defines agency as enacted by a broader social environment through cognitive scripts and collective myths. In line with this definition, political agency of Crimean Tatars is taken here as a social construction rather than an objective fact that exists independently from a social environment. See also Nikolko’s chapter in this edited volume.
- 3.
Press release of the Embassy of the Russian Federation in the Republic of Botswana, “On the situation with Crimean Tatars,” 1 February 2017. http://www.botswana.mid.ru/press-release_e.html.
- 4.
The head of FADH Igor Barinov: “According to our recent sociological studies in the Republic of Crimea, aimed specifically at representatives of the Crimean Tatar population, to answer the question: ‘If given the opportunity, would you like to move to another area of the Crimea, another region of Russia, to Ukraine, to another country?’ 0% of the respondents answered that they would like to move to Ukraine” (TASS 2016).
- 5.
Press release of the Embassy of the Russian Federation in the Republic of Botswana, “On the situation with Crimean Tatars,” 1 February 2017. http://www.botswana.mid.ru/press-release_e.html.
- 6.
“Statement in Response to the Statement of the Russian Federation on Linguistic Rights of National Minorities in Ukraine,” delivered by the Delegation of Ukraine to the 1137th meeting of the OSCE Permanent Council, 16 March 2017. http://www.osce.org/permanent-council/307241?download=true.
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Buhari-Gulmez, D. (2018). “Crisis” and Crimean Tatars: Discourses of Self-determination in Flux. In: Resende, E., Budrytė, D., Buhari-Gulmez, D. (eds) Crisis and Change in Post-Cold War Global Politics. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-78589-9_9
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