Abstract:

The Crimean Tatars have clearly demonstrated their political attitudes as anti-Russian and pro-Ukrainian, seeing that this new Russian occupation, like the previous ones, would constitute an existential threat to themselves after Moscow occupied Crimea in 2014. The truth is that some commentators even began to think that a new ethnic cleansing could be applied against the Crimean Tatar by the Russian occupational government. Anyway, the Crimean Tatar national movement suddenly became one of the main targets of the new occupational authorities and faced a series of repressive policies. These include pleasant arrests, the systematic harassment and threat of the regime opponents, the searches in the homes of the Crimean Tatar activists who are opposed to Crimea, the compulsory distribution of Russian passports/citizenship and therefore the compulsory military acquisition to the occupying Russian army, the conscious destruction of the Crimean Tatar cultural heritage, the discriminatory policies against the Crimean Tatar language, the anti-Tatar propaganda of Crimean and the illegal policies aimed at changing the ethnic structure of the occupied Crimean by encouraging ethnic Russians to settle in Crimea from the Russian Federation’s interior areas. Given the current developments in the Crimea, this study will try to analyze the causes of such oppressive policies by the Russian administration and to evaluate its impact on the Crimean Tatar people and the Crimean society.

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