Crimean Flag
Yesterday we posted on Shoebat.com about two Russian comics who prank called Turkish President Erdogan and got him to reveal Turkish state secrets during the 13-minute conversation. One of the secrets that came out was, as a part of his plans to try an undermine Russian influence, to support the Crimean Tartars. The Crimean Tartars are Muslims who arrived and settled in Crimea in the 13th century and have been a source of constant rebellion ever since. They were long time ideological and material supporters of the Ottoman Empire until its downfall. Another secret was that Erdogan wanted to impose a blockade, even a naval blockade against Crimea.
Well, it has just been revealed that the Crimean Tartars are starting to step up resistance to the Russians. Not only that, but part of their plan against the Russians, which has already been in motion, involved setting up a blockade in the Peninsula.
How interesting. I wonder who has been funding them? From the UK Daily Mail:
Two years after Russia seized Crimea from Ukraine, President Vladimir Putin touts the move as a historic achievement, looking on with a satisfied smile from countless billboards across the peninsula. However, overwhelming opposition from the Muslim Tatar ethnic minority puts a crack in this picture of unanimous support, as evidenced in interviews with more than two dozen Tatars across Crimea. And the resistance appears to be growing.
Many described the intimidation of community leaders, the closure of Tatar language classes and a general atmosphere of mistrust of Tatar residents. The Associated Press conducted some interviews at other people’s homes because of worries about police surveillance.
The majority of the people in Crimea are ethnic Russian and support Russia’s annexation. The nearly 300,000 Crimean Tatars, who make up less than 15 percent of the population, are Muslims, although largely secular.
Community leaders say repression has left young people fuming, risking their radicalization along the lines of the restive North Caucasus, a patchwork of predominantly Muslim republics in southern Russia.
Tatar activists are already fighting back.
Before Russia annexed Crimea, Lenur Islyamov was a businessman with family and assets in Moscow. Last fall, he traded his business suits for military-style clothing to lead a resistance movement that imposed a blockade on the peninsula in retaliation for Russia’s persecution of the Tatars.
In September, the activists began stopping goods from crossing into Crimea. Three months later, the Ukrainian government stepped in and banned all trade.
“Everyone, including Ukraine, left us with no other choice,” said Islyamov, whose assets in Moscow and Crimea have been seized. “Most of us don’t want to go to war — we want to make sandwiches, take our children to school, go shopping — but we’ve been forced to do this.”
=
-- Delivered by Feed43 service
Post a Comment