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160-626: Crimean Tatars ( Crimean Tatar : qırımtatarlar , къырымтатарлар ) or Crimeans ( Crimean Tatar : qırımlılar , къырымлылар ) are an East European Turkic ethnic group and nation indigenous to Crimea . The formation and ethnogenesis of Crimean Tatars lasted over 2500 years in Crimea and the Northern Black Sea region , uniting Mediterranean populations with those of the Eurasian Steppe . Crimean Tatars constituted

320-711: A campaign with all his troops (80,000) to gain access to the Black Sea, he was surrounded by the army of the Crimean Khan Devlet II Giray , finding himself in a hopeless situation. And only the betrayal of the Ottoman vizier Baltacı Mehmet Pasha allowed Peter to get out of the encirclement of the Crimean Tatars. When Devlet II Giray protested against the vizier's decision, his response was: "You should know your Tatar affairs. The affairs of

480-518: A memorandum consisting of 17,500 pages of text in 29 volumes to the UN's International Court of Justice about racial discrimination against Crimean Tatars by Russian authorities in occupied Crimea and state financing of terrorism by Russian Federation in Donbas . In the 2001 Ukrainian census , 248,200 Ukrainian citizens identified themselves as Crimean Tatars with 98% (or about 243,400) of them living in

640-571: A modern Greek variety , that has developed remotely in the region of Pontus. Commonly known as Pontiaka , it is traditionally called Romeika by its native speakers. The earliest Greek colonies in the region of Pontus begin in 700 BC, including Sinope , Trapezus , and Amisos . Greek colonies continued to expand on the coast of the Black Sea ( Euxeinos Pontos ) between the Archaic and Classical periods. The Hellenistic Kingdom of Pontus

800-687: A "national minority", but not an indigenous people, and continues to deny that they are titular people of Crimea, even though the Soviet Union considered them indigenous before their deportation and the subsequent dissolution of the Crimean Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic (Crimean ASSR). Today, Crimean Tatars constitute approximately 15% of the population of Crimea. A Crimean Tatar diaspora remains in Turkey and Uzbekistan. The Crimean Tatar language

960-604: A Pontic Greek.'" Anton Popov studied Caucasus Greeks in former Soviet territories. Most of the Romeika speakers that Popov interviewed referred to themselves as "Romei." He also mentioned that many Caucasus Greeks only began referring to themselves as Pontians when they went to work in Greece. During Ottoman times, most Pontian Greeks did not see themselves as "Greeks" per se . Neal Acherson, in his book Black Sea , writes, "Who did they think they were, in this pre-nationalist age? In

1120-446: A concubine of Sultan Suleiman . In retaliation, the lands of Crimean Tatars were being raided by Zaporozhian Cossacks , armed Ukrainian horsemen, who defended the steppe frontier – Wild Fields – against Tatar slave raids and often attacked and plundered the lands of Ottoman Turks and Crimean Tatars. The Don Cossacks and Kalmyk Mongols also managed to raid Crimean Tatars' land. The last recorded major Crimean raid, before those in

1280-590: A hundred years later, in 1767, there were 4 million people living in the Crimean khanate, and in 1778, that is, just eleven years later, all the Christians were evicted from its territory by the Russian authorities, which turned out to be about 30 thousand, mostly Armenians and Greeks, and there were no Ukrainians among them. Also, according to more reliable modern sources than Evliya's data, slaves never constituted

1440-503: A limited number of seats in the 1994 Crimean parliamentary election . Nonetheless, they faced constant discrimination from the authorities of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea , which was primarily governed by ethnic Russians and directed towards Russian interests. Under the presidency of Viktor Yushchenko , increased attention was paid to Crimean Tatars, with trials for crimes against humanity beginning for those involved in

1600-893: A long time, until the late 18th century, the Crimean Khanate maintained a massive slave trade with the Ottoman Empire and the Middle East which was one of the important factors of its economy. One of the most important trading ports and slave markets was Kefe . According to the Ottoman census of 1526, taxes on the sale and purchase of slaves accounted for 24% of the funds, levied in Ottoman Crimea for all activities. But in fact, there were always small raids committed by both Tatars and Cossacks , in both directions. The 17th century Ottoman writer and traveller Evliya Çelebi wrote that there were 920,000 Ukrainian slaves in

1760-667: A national consciousness and modern thinking emerged among the entire Turkic-speaking population of the Russian Empire . After the Russian Revolution of 1917 this new elite, which included Noman Çelebicihan and Cafer Seydamet Qırımer proclaimed the first democratic republic in the Islamic world, named the Crimean People's Republic on 26 December 1917. However, this republic was short-lived and abolished by

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1920-780: A number of churches, monasteries, and other religious buildings. The Virgin Mary Monastery in Şebinkarahisar District , Giresun Province may be one of the oldest Greek Orthodox monasteries in the region; Turkish archaeologists suspect it may date to the 2nd century. The monastery is made of carved stone and built into a cave. As of the mid-2010s, it was open for tourism. Other religious buildings were constructed later. Three ruined monasteries lie in Maçka , Trabzon Province: Panagias Soumela Monastery , Saint George Peristereotas Monastery , and Vazelon Monastery . These were built during early Byzantine times. Vazelon Monastery, for example,

2080-877: A result of the deportations. Starting in 1967, a few were allowed to return and in 1989 the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union condemned the removal of Crimean Tatars from their motherland as inhumane and lawless, but only a tiny percent were able to return before the full right of return became policy in 1989. The Crimean Tatars have been members of the Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organization (UNPO) since 1991. The European Union and international indigenous groups do not dispute their status as an indigenous people and they have been officially recognized as an indigenous people of Ukraine as of 2014. The current Russian administration considers them

2240-476: A second deportation for them. A last-resort method to avoid a second deportation was self-immolation, famously used by Crimean Tatar national hero Musa Mamut , one of those who moved to Crimea without a residence permit. He doused himself with gasoline and committed self-immolation in front of police trying to deport him on 23 June 1978. Mamut died of severe burns several days later, but expressed no regret for having committed self-immolation. Mamut posthumously became

2400-531: A significant part of the Crimean population. Russian professor Glagolev writes that there were 1.800.000 free Crimean Tatars in the Crimean Khanate in 1666, it also should be mentioned that a huge part of Ukraine was part of the Crimean Khanate, that is why Ukrainians could have been taken into account in the general population of the Khanate by Evliya (see Khan Ukraine ). Some researchers estimate that more than 2 million people were captured and enslaved during

2560-529: A strong Greek identity. After the Greek-Turkish population exchange in 1923, even though the state never considered them a "national threat", many of these Pontians saw their language as a "cultural flaw" and desired to get rid of it. Historian and psychologist Stavros Iason Gavriilidis states that this was a result of the trauma they faced from the Greek genocide . In Greek mythology the Black Sea region

2720-749: A symbol of Crimean Tatar resistance and nationhood, and remains celebrated by Crimean Tatars. Other notable self-immolations in the name of the Crimean Tatar right of return movement include that of Shavkat Yarullin, who fatally committed self-immolation in front of a government building in protest in October 1989, and Seidamet Balji who attempted self-immolation while being deported from Crimea in December that year but survived. Many other famous Crimean Tatars threatened government authorities with self-immolation if they continued to be ignored, including Hero of

2880-421: A verbalizing suffix to a noun or adjective, as demonstrated in the following examples: тиш ле tiş le tooth- VB тиш ле tiş le Pontic Greeks The Pontic Greeks ( Pontic : Ρωμαίοι, Ρωμιοί ; Turkish : Pontus Rumları or Karadeniz Rumları ; Greek : Πόντιοι , Ελληνοπόντιοι ), also Pontian Greeks or simply Pontians , are an ethnically Greek group indigenous to

3040-678: Is Nakip Mosque in Trabzon, originally built as a Greek Orthodox church during the 900s or 1000s. Ancient Greeks reached and settled the Black Sea by the 700s BC; Sinope was perhaps the earliest colony. According to the Pontic Greek historian Strabo , Greeks from the existing colony of Miletus settled the Pontus region. Some walls from an early fortification stand in the modern Turkish city of Sinop (renamed from Sinope). These fortifications may date back to early Greek colonization in

3200-580: Is agglutinating , with the exclusive use of suffixing to express grammatical categories. Generally, suffixes are attached to the ends of word stems, although derivational morphology makes uses of compounding as well. Overall, the grammatical structure of the language is similar to that of other West Kipchak varieties. Crimean Tatar is a pro-drop language with a generally SOV word order . Crimean Tatar, like most Turkic languages, features pervasive vowel harmony , which results in sound changes when suffixes are added to verb or noun stems. Essentially,

3360-472: Is Pontus proper. Those from Georgia, northeastern Anatolia, and the former Russian Caucasus are in contemporary Greek academic circles often referred to as "Eastern Pontic [Greeks]" or Caucasian Greeks . The Turkic-speaking Greek Orthodox Urums are included in this latter groups as well. Aside from their predominantly Greek origin, they also likely owe a degree of their ancestry to several sources. Pontic Greeks are an ethnic Greek subgroup, indigenous to

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3520-507: Is a member of Kipchak languages of the Turkic language family. It has three dialects and the standard language is written in the central dialect. Crimean Tatar has a unique position among the Turkic languages because its three "dialects" belong to three different (sub)groups of Turkic. This makes the classification of Crimean Tatar as a whole difficult. UNESCO ranked Crimean Tatar as one of

3680-468: Is also important. The Pontic label is relatively new. Anton Popov writes, "Anthony Bryer states that 'at the beginning of the nineteenth century a Pontic Christian might describe himself in the old way as a Douberites, Phytanos or Tsitenos first, and then as a "Roman" (Rum) Orthodox subject of the sultan; by the end of the century he was calling himself a Greek, and after he had finally left the Pontos in 1923,

3840-611: Is also widespread. Occasionally, song competitions take place between young men and women during Crimean holidays and weddings. Ritual folklore includes winter greetings, wedding songs, lamentations and circular dance songs (khoran). Epic stories or destans are very popular among the Crimean Tatars, particularly the destans of "Chora batyr", "Edige", " Koroglu ", and others. On the Nowruz holiday, Crimean Tatars usually cook eggs, chicken soup, puff meat pie (kobete), halva , and sweet biscuits. Children put on masks and sing special songs under

4000-718: Is an important part of belonging to an ethnic group . Pontians have a lot in common with other Greeks; for example, they speak Romeika , a Greek language variety. Pontians also traditionally follow the Greek Orthodox faith, although a minority in Turkey are Sunni Muslims . Pontian Greeks also share traits with other ethnic groups. Like Turks, they cook havítz ( kuymak ), boortsog , and İmam bayıldı . They share other aspects of their culture with Lazes, Persians, and Armenians. They may owe some aspects of their culture to ancient Anatolian peoples . Pontian self-identification

4160-439: Is considered the direct ancestor of the current language of the Crimean Tatars with possible incorporations of the other languages, like Crimean Gothic . The fact that Crimean Tatars' ethnogenesis took place in Crimea and consisted of several stages lasting over 2500 years is proved by genetic research showing that the gene pool of the Crimean Tatars preserved both the initial components for more than 2.5 thousand years, and later in

4320-454: Is fairly complex, inflecting for tense, number, person, aspect, mood and voice. Verbs are conjugated according to the following paradigm: It is possible, albeit rare, for a single verb to contain all of these possible components, as in: Мен Men I ювундырылмадым. yuvundırılmadım. wash- REFL - CAUS - PASS - NEG - PAST - 1SG Мен ювундырылмадым. Men yuvundırılmadım. I wash-REFL-CAUS-PASS-NEG-PAST-1SG "I

4480-586: Is in the Oghuz branch of Turkic languages commonly spoken in Turkey, Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan The formation period of the Crimean Tatar spoken dialects began with the first Turkic invasions of Crimea by Cumans and Pechenegs and ended during the period of the Crimean Khanate . However, the official written languages of the Crimean Khanate were Chagatai and Ottoman Turkish . After Islamization , Crimean Tatars wrote with an Arabic script . In 1876,

4640-604: Is more prevalent in Steppe Tatar cuisine. Many Uzbek dishes were incorporated into Crimean Tatar national cuisine during exile in Central Asia since 1944, and these dishes have become prevalent in Crimea since the return. Uzbek samsa , laghman , and Crimean Tatar : plov ( pilaf ) are sold in most Tatar roadside cafes in Crimea as national dishes. In turn, some Crimean Tatar dishes, including chibureki , have been adopted by peoples outside Crimea, such as in Turkey and

4800-470: Is one of the most seriously endangered languages in Europe. Almost all Crimean Tatars are bilingual or multilingual, using the dominant languages of their respective home countries, such as Russian, Turkish, Romanian, Uzbek, Bulgarian or Ukrainian. The Crimean Tatar language consists of three or four dialects. Among them is also the southern dialect, also known as the coastal dialect (yalıboyu, cenübiy), which

4960-778: Is the region where Jason and the Argonauts sailed to find the Golden Fleece . The Amazons , female warriors in Greek Mythology lived in Pontus , and a minority lived in Taurica , also known as Crimea , which is also the minor unique settlement of Pontic Greeks. The warlike characteristics of Pontic Greeks were once said to have been derived from the Amazons of Pontus. The first recorded Greek colony , established on

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5120-911: Is the same as the Turkish alphabet , with two additional characters: Ñ ñ and Q q. In the Russian-annexed " Republic of Crimea " all official communications and education in Crimean Tatar are conducted exclusively in the Cyrillic alphabet. The vowel system of Crimean Tatar is similar to some other Turkic languages. Because high vowels in Crimean Tatar are short and reduced, /i/ and /ɯ/ are realized close to [ɪ] , even though they are phonologically distinct. In addition to these phonemes, Crimean also displays marginal phonemes that occur in borrowed words, especially palatalized consonants . The southern (coastal) dialect substitutes / x / for / q / , e.g. standard qara 'black', southern xara . At

5280-612: The Amasya trials ; others were subject to massacres; many Pontic men were forced to work in labor camps until they died; still others were deported to the interior on death marches . Rape, primarily of Pontic women and girls, was prominent. In 1923 those still remaining in Turkey were exiled to Greece as part of the population exchange between Greece and Turkey defined by the Treaty of Lausanne . In his book Black Sea , author Neal Ascherson writes: The Turkish guide-books on sale in

5440-593: The Autonomous Republic of Crimea . An additional 1,800 (or about 0.7%) lived in the city of Sevastopol , also on the Crimean peninsula , but outside the border of the autonomous republic. This territory was annexed by Russia in 2014 . About 150,000 remain in exile in Central Asia , mainly in Uzbekistan . According to Tatar activists, Eskişehir Province houses about 150,000 Crimean Tatars. Some activists set

5600-534: The Balkars , a highland ethnic group from the Caucasus , being most genetically akin to the Crimean Tatars. Furthermore, the hypothesis positing a substantial impact of Slavic populations on the genetic makeup of the Crimean Tatars is also refuted by genetic studies, which reveal no significant influx of "Slavic" genetic material into the Crimean Tatar gene pool despite prolonged proximity. The preliminary phase of

5760-694: The Bolshevik uprising in January 1918. As a part of the Russian famine of 1921 the Peninsula suffered widespread starvation. More than 100,000 Crimean Tatars starved to death, and tens of thousands of Tatars fled to Turkey or Romania. Thousands more were deported or killed during the collectivization in 1928–29. The Soviet government's "collectivization" policies led to a major nationwide famine in 1931–33 . Between 1917 and 1933, 150,000 Tatars—about 50% of

5920-649: The Grand Duchy of Lithuania to invite Hacı Giray to rule in the Crimea. He became the founder of the Giray dynasty , which ruled until the annexation of the Crimean Khanate by Russia in 1783. Hacı I Giray was a Jochid descendant of Genghis Khan and of his grandson Batu Khan of the Golden Horde . During the reign of Meñli I Giray , Hacı's son, the army of the Great Horde that still existed then invaded

6080-452: The Latin script . The Uniform Turkic Alphabet was replaced in 1938 by a Cyrillic alphabet . During the 1990s and 2000s, the government of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea under Ukraine encouraged replacing the script with a Latin version again, but the Cyrillic has still been widely used (mainly in published literature, newspapers and education). The current Latin-based Crimean Tatar alphabet

6240-713: The Mithridatic Wars , three bitter wars against the Roman Republic , before eventually being defeated. Mithridates VI the Great, as he was left in memory, claiming to be the protector of the Greek world against the barbarian Romans, expanded his kingdom to Bithynia , Crimea and Propontis (in present-day Ukraine and Turkey) before his downfall after the Third Mithridatic War . Nevertheless,

6400-630: The Ottoman Empire , with great autonomy after 1580. At the same time, the Nogai hordes, not having their own khan, were vassals of the Crimean one, Muskovy and Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth paid annual tribute to the khan (until 1700 and 1699 respectively). In the 17th century, the Crimean Tatars helped Ukrainian Cossacks led by Bohdan Khmelnytsky in the struggle for independence, which allowed them to win several decisive victories over Polish troops. In 1711, when Peter I of Russia went on

6560-674: The Ottoman Empire . Due to the oppression by the Russian administration and colonial politics of Russian Empire, the Crimean Tatars were forced to immigrate to the Ottoman Empire. Further expulsions followed in 1812 for fear of the reliability of the Tatars in the face of Napoleon's advance. Particularly, the Crimean War of 1853–1856, the laws of 1860–63, the Tsarist policy and the Russo-Turkish War (1877–1878) caused an exodus of

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6720-834: The Romanov dynasty , the Crimean Tatars were almost completely driven from the Crimean peninsula under the Soviets. Almost immediately after retaking of Crimea from Axis forces , in May 1944, the USSR State Defense Committee ordered the deportation of all of the Crimean Tatars from Crimea, including the families of Crimean Tatars who had served in the Soviet Army. The deportees were transported in trains and boxcars to Central Asia , primarily to Uzbekistan . The Crimean Tatars lost 18–46 percent of their population as

6880-497: The Russo-Turkish War (1768–74) took place during the reign of Peter the Great (1682–1725). However, Cossack raids continued after that time; Ottoman Grand Vizier complained to the Russian consul about raids to Crimea and Özi in 1761. In 1769 one last major Tatar raid, which took place during the Russo-Turkish War , saw the capture of 20,000 slaves. Nevertheless, some historians, including Russian historian Valery Vozgrin and Polish historian Oleksa Gayvoronsky have emphasized that

7040-729: The Sublime Porte are entrusted to me. You do not have the right to interfere in them" . Treaty of the Pruth was signed, and 10 years later, Russia declared itself an empire. In 1736, the Crimean Khan Qaplan I Giray was summoned by the Turkish Sultan Ahmed III to Persia . Understanding that Russia could take advantage of the lack of troops in Crimea, Qaplan Giray wrote to the Sultan to think twice, but

7200-711: The Taksim Meydane offer this account of the 1923 Katastrofĕ : 'After the proclamation of the Republic, the Greeks who lived in the region returned to their own country   ...' Their own country? Returned? They had lived in the Pontos for nearly three thousand years. Their Pontian dialect was not understandable to twentieth-century Athenians. According to the 1928 census of Greece, there were in total 240,695 Pontic Greek refugees in Greece: 11,435 from Russia, 47,091 from

7360-439: The Tombs of the kings of Pontus . Their necropolis is still visible in Amasya. One Pontic king, Pharnaces I of Pontus , may have built Giresun Castle in the 100s BC. There's also a chance it was built during medieval times. From the castle, the Black Sea and much of Giresun are visible. Many other structures date back to Greek occupation in ancient times. Ancient Greeks inhabited Giresun , then called Kerasous, from

7520-439: The Treaty of Küçük Kaynarca (1774) signed after the war, Crimea became independent and the Ottomans renounced their political right to protect the Crimean Khanate. After a period of political unrest in Crimea, Russia violated the treaty and annexed the Crimean Khanate in 1783. After the annexation, the wealthier Tatars, who had exported wheat, meat, fish and wine to other parts of the Black Sea, began to be expelled and to move to

7680-534: The Yamnaya archaeological culture , and the "European" (N3a3) and "Asian" (N3a5) Neolithic variants of haplogroup N3 in Northern Eurasia . These findings may reflect not only the genetic legacy of the Scythians and Sarmatians but also more ancient affiliations between the populations of mainland Eastern Europe and the Crimean Peninsula. The genetic composition of the Crimean Tatars is primarily constituted by five predominant haplogroups : R1a , R1b , J2 , G2a3b1 and E1b1b1 , which together account for 67% of

7840-423: The "Tat" descendants of Tatarized Goths and other Turkified peoples. The genetic composition of the Crimean Tatars is distinguished by the presence of two predominant patterns: the so-called "sea pattern" and the "steppe pattern". The former is believed to have originated from Mediterranean populations , while the latter is attributed to the nomadic tribes of the Great Eurasian steppe . The primary contributor to

8000-419: The "sea pattern" of the Crimean Tatars is not the later migrations of Greeks from the Byzantine Empire , but rather the ancient populations from the city-states of the Eastern Mediterranean dating back to the 7th to 5th centuries BC. This assertion is further substantiated by the analysis of the Crimean Tatar gene pool as revealed by the Human Origins full-genome panel data. Geneticists have concluded that

8160-488: The 'nation' of Greece." He goes on to explain how the Greek government encouraged nationalist thinking: "A speaker in the Greek parliament in 1844 expounded this newly designed identity: 'The Kingdom of Greece is not Greece. It constitutes only one part, the smallest and the poorest. A Greek is not only a man who lives within the Kingdom, but also one who lives in Yoannina, Serrai, Adrianople, Constantinople, Smyrna, Trebizond, Crete and in any land associated with Greek history and

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8320-426: The 1800s; it remains today. Another was the small stone church in Çakrak , Giresun Province. Still another was Taşbaşı Church in Ordu, built in the 1800s; after the Greek Orthodox were expelled from Turkey, it saw some use as a prison. Many other less-notable churches remain throughout the Pontus region. Some of the old houses once belonging to Pontic Greeks still stand. For example, Konstantinos Theofylaktos ,

8480-446: The 1950s the "special settler" regime ended, but Crimean Tatars were still kept closely tethered to Central Asia; while other deported ethnic groups like the Chechens , Karachays , and Kalmyks were fully allowed to return to their native lands during the Khrushchev thaw, economic and political reasons combined with basic misconceptions and stereotypes about Crimean Tatars led to Moscow and Tashkent being reluctant to allow Crimean Tatars

8640-583: The 1990s, preserving their own customs and dialect of Greek . Between 1913 and 1923, the Ottoman leadership attempted to expel or kill its native Christian population of Anatolia , including the Pontic Greeks. The genocide was first perpetrated by the Three Pashas and later by the rebel government under Mustafa Kemal . Different scholars have made different estimates for the death toll; most estimates range from 300,000 to 360,000 Pontic Greeks killed. Some notable victims include Matthaios Kofidis and Nikos Kapetanidis . Many were executed, for example during

8800-574: The 20th century, at least 800 thousand Tatars left Crimea. Today the descendants of these Crimeans form the Crimean Tatar diaspora in Bulgaria, Romania and Turkey. Ismail Gasprali (1851–1914) was a renowned Crimean Tatar intellectual, influenced by the nationalist movements of the period, whose efforts laid the foundation for the modernization of Muslim culture and the emergence of the Crimean Tatar national identity. The bilingual Crimean Tatar-Russian newspaper Terciman -Perevodchik he published in 1883–1914, functioned as an educational tool through which

8960-425: The 23 years of Ukraine's independence the Ukrainian leaders have been using Crimean Tatars as pawns in their political games without doing them any tangible favors". The issue of Crimean Tatar persecution by Russia has since been raised regularly on an international level. On 18 March 2014, the day Crimea was annexed by Russia, and Crimean Tatar was de jure declared one of the three official languages of Crimea. It

9120-410: The 5th century BC. During this time, they must also have used Giresun Island . The poet Apollonius of Rhodes mentioned this island in his best-known epic, the Argonautica . Altars on the island date to the Classical or Hellenistic period. Its use as a religious center continued after the rise of Christianity in the region. During Byzantine times, likely in the 400s or 500s AD, a monastic complex

9280-399: The 600s BC. During late Ottoman and recent Turkish times, the fortress housed a state prison . Between 281 BC and 62 AD, the Mithridatic kings ruled the Pontos region and called it the Kingdom of Pontus . While the ruling dynasty was Persian in origin, many kings had Greek ancestry, as Pontic rulers often married Seleucid nobility. Some of these Persian/Greek rulers were interred in

9440-458: The Black Sea coast of the Pontus Euxinus , he founded the Attalid dynasty and the Anatolian city of Pergamon in the second century BC. This region was organized circa 281 BC as a kingdom by Mithridates I of Pontus , whose ancestry line dated back to Ariobarzanes I , a Persian ruler of the Greek town of Cius . The most prominent descendant of Mithridates I was Mithridates VI Eupator , who between 90 and 65 BC fought

9600-467: The Black Sea coast. According to Anthony Bryer , a British Byzantinist , it was built in the 1200s or 1300s on the order of Trapezuntine rulers. Zilkale Castle is another fortress in Rize Province. According to the same historian, it may have been built by the Empire of Trebizond for local Hemshin rulers. Yet another fortress, the Kov Castle in Gümüşhane Province , may have been built by Trapezuntine Emperor Alexios III . Alexios III , one of

9760-442: The Byzantine Empire as 'Rom' or 'Rum' people, or as 'Romanians' [Romans] — citizens of the Roman Empire, in other words, who were also distinguished by their Orthodox Christian faith. Struggling with these categories, a Pontic Turk whose village had once been Greek told Anthony Bryer: 'This is Roman (Rum) country; they spoke Christian here   ...'" This identification mirrored the identification of other non-intellectual Greeks at

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9920-420: The Byzantine Empire from 1082 to 1185, a time in which the empire resurged to recover much of Anatolia from the Seljuk Turks . In the aftermath of the fall of Constantinople to the Crusaders of the Fourth Crusade in 1204, the Empire of Trebizond was established by Alexios I of Trebizond , a descendant of Alexios I Komnenos , the patriarch of the Komnenos dynasty . The Empire was ruled by this new branch of

10080-455: The Caucasus, and 182,169 from the Pontus region of Anatolia. In Turkey, however, together with Crypto-Armenians surfacing it has also given the Pontic community in Turkey more attention, estimates are up to 345,000 During their millennia-long presence on the Black Sea's southern coast, Pontic Greeks constructed a number of buildings, some of which still stand today. Many structures sit in ruins. Others, however, enjoy active use; one example

10240-407: The Crimea acquired the name "Tatars", the Islamic religion and Turkic language, and the process of consolidating the multi-ethnic conglomerate of the Peninsula began, which has led to the emergence of the Crimean Tatar people. Over several centuries, on the basis of Cuman language with a noticeable Oghuz influence, the Crimean Tatar language has developed. At the beginning of the 13th century in

10400-416: The Crimea but only 187,000 free Muslims. However, the Ukrainian historian Sergey Gromenko considers this testimony of Çelebi a myth popular among ultranationalists, pointing out that today it is known from the writings on economics that in the 17th century, the Crimea could feed no more than 500 thousand people. For comparison, according to the notes of the Consul of France to Qırım Giray khan Baron Totta ,

10560-452: The Crimea from the Golden Horde may be counted since the beginning of princess (khanum) Canike 's, the daughter of the powerful Khan of the Golden Horde Tokhtamysh and the wife of the founder of the Nogai Horde Edigey , reign in the peninsula. During her reign she strongly supported Hacı Giray in the struggle for the Crimean throne until her death in 1437. Following the death of Canike, the situation of Hacı Giray in Crimea weakened and he

10720-416: The Crimea from the north, Crimean Khan won the general battle, overtaking the army of the Horde Khan in Takht-Lia, where he was killed, the Horde ceased to exist, and the Crimean Khan became the Great Khan and the successor of this state. Since then, the Crimean Khanate was among the strongest powers in Eastern Europe until the beginning of the 18th century. The Khanate officially operated as a vassal state of

10880-411: The Crimea, the majority of the population, which was already composed of a Turkic people — Cumans, became a part of the Golden Horde . The Crimean Tatars mostly adopted Islam in the 14th century and thereafter Crimea became one of the centers of Islamic civilization in Eastern Europe. In the same century, trends towards separatism appeared in the Crimean Ulus of the Golden Horde. De facto independence of

11040-404: The Crimean Khan. It is largely assumed that the Tatarization process that mostly took place in the 16th century brought a sense of cultural unity through the blending of the Greeks , Italians , Ottoman Turks of the southern coast, Goths of the central mountains and Turkic -speaking Kipchaks and Cumans of the steppe and forming of the Crimean Tatar ethnic group. However, the Cuman language

11200-402: The Crimean Khanate. After a period of political unrest in Crimea, Imperial Russia violated the treaty and annexed the Crimean Khanate in 1783. The main population of the Crimean khanate were Crimean Tatars, along with them in the Crimean khanate lived significant communities of Karaites , Italians , Armenians , Greeks , Circassians and Roma . In the early 16th century under the rule of

11360-403: The Crimean Tatar language at the local level among areas with the deported populations. The conclusion that "no basis to renew autonomy and grant Crimean Tatars the right to return" triggered widespread protests. Less than two years after Gromyko's commission had rejected their request for autonomy and return, pogroms against the deported Meskhetian Turks were taking place in Central Asia. During

11520-416: The Crimean Tatar language, and 13 of them only do so in the first three grades. Squatting in Crimea has been a significant method for Crimean Tatars to rebuild communities in Crimea destroyed by the deportations. These squats have sometimes resulted in violence by Crimean Russians, such as the 1992 Krasny Ray events, in which the security forces of the separatist Republic of Crimea (not to be confused with

11680-431: The Crimean Tatar people are Tauri , Scythians , Sarmatians , Alans , Ancient Greeks , Crimean Goths , Huns , Bulgars , Khazars , Pechenegs , Cumans , Italians . The consolidation of this diverse ethnic conglomerate into a single Crimean Tatar people took place over the course of centuries. The connecting elements in this process were the commonality of the territory, the Turkic language and Islamic religion . By

11840-528: The Crimean Tatars has been strongly influenced by Russian historians, who have rewritten the history of the Crimean Khanate to justify the annexation of Crimea in 1783, and, especially, then by Soviet historians who distorted the history of Crimea to justify the 1944 deportation of the Crimean Tatars . The Russo-Turkish War (1768–1774) resulted in the defeat of the Ottomans by the Russians, and according to

12000-421: The Crimean Tatars, as a distinct ethnic group, were formed directly within Crimea, rather than migrating to the region, thereby affirming their status as the indigenous inhabitants of Crimea. Contrary to hypotheses suggesting that the gene pool of the Crimean Tatars was significantly influenced by Central Asian populations or Mongolic groups , genetic research indicates a considerable divergence from both, with

12160-640: The Crimean khans passed part of Nogays (Mangyts), who roamed outside the Crimean Peninsula , moving there during periods of drought and starvation. The majority of the population professed Islam of the Hanafi stream; part of the population – Orthodox, Monotheletism, Judaism; in the 16th century. There were small Catholic communities. The Crimean Tatar population of the Crimean Peninsula was partially exempt from taxes. The Greeks paid dzhyziya,

12320-593: The Greek Orthodox community. Pontic Greeks continued to live and build under Ottoman rule. For example, Pontians in Gümüşhane established the valley town of Santa (today called Dumanlı ) in the 1600s. Even today, many of the stone schools, houses, and churches built by Santa's Greek Orthodox residents still stand. They weren't divorced from Ottoman society, however; Pontic Greeks also contributed their labor to Ottoman construction projects. In 1610, Pontians built

12480-564: The Greek race." The newly established Kingdom of Greece set up consulates in the Ottoman Empire to spread the Megali Idea . While the Anatolians recognized a shared cultural heritage, most weren't involved in an irredentist movement. Few Pontic Greeks supported the Megali Idea except for some Greek nationalists such as Nikos Kapetanidis . Very few wanted an independent Pontic state, and few had ambition to join with Greece, even in

12640-566: The Greek resistance in Pontus. During this long period of resistance many Pontic Greeks nobles and aristocrats married foreign emperors and dynasties, most notably of Medieval Russia , Medieval Georgia , or the Safavid Persian dynasty, and to a lesser extent the Kara Koyunlu rulers, in order to gain their protection and aid against the Ottoman threat. Many of the landowning and lower-class families of Pontus "turned-Turk", adopting

12800-599: The Hacı Abdullah Wall in Giresun Province. The wall is 6.5 km (4.0 mi) long. Trabzon remained an important center of Pontic Greek society and culture throughout Ottoman times. A scholar named Sevastos Kyminitis founded the Phrontisterion of Trapezous , a Greek school operating in Trabzon from the late 1600s to the early 1900s. It was an important center for Greek-language education across

12960-650: The Italians were in a privileged position due to the partial tax relief made during the reign of Meñli Geray I . By the 18th century the population of the Crimean khanate was about 500 thousand people. The territory of the Crimean khanate was divided into Kinakanta (governorships), which consisted of Kadylyk, covering a number of settlements. Until the beginning of the 18th century, the Crimean Nogays were known for frequent, at some periods almost annual, slave raids into present-day 'mainland' Ukraine and Russia. For

13120-490: The Komenos dynasty which bore the name Megas Komnenos Axouch (or Axouchos or Afouxechos) as early rulers intermarried with the family of Axouch, a Byzantine noble house of Turkic origin which included famed politicians such as John Axouch This empire lasted for more than 250 years until it eventually fell at the hands of Mehmed II of the Ottoman Empire in 1461. However it took the Ottomans 18 more years to finally defeat

13280-538: The Middle Ages; in 1204, the Matzouka ( Maçka ) region alone contained Greeks, Italians, Lazes and a few Armenians. In the 21st century, most Pontians strongly identify as Greeks. However, this has not always been the case. Before the creation of the diaspora, many Pontians did not consider themselves Greek. An ethnicity is made up of people with ancestry or cultural background in common. Self-identification

13440-612: The North Caucasus. Crimean Tatar language A long-term ban on the study of the Crimean Tatar language following the deportation of the Crimean Tatars by the Soviet government has led to the fact that at the moment UNESCO ranked the Crimean Tatar language among the languages under serious threat of extinction ( severely endangered ). However, according to the Institute of Oriental Studies , due to negative situations,

13600-464: The Ottoman period a number of Pontian Greeks converted to Islam and adopted the Turkish language. This could be willingly, for example so to avoid paying the higher rate of taxation imposed on Orthodox Christians or in order to make themselves more eligible for higher level government and regular military employment opportunities within the empire (at least in the later period following the abolition of

13760-571: The Soviet Gulag system. Starting in 1944, Crimean Tatars lived mostly in Central Asia with the designation as "special settlers", meaning that they had few rights. "Special settlers" were forbidden from leaving small designated areas and had to frequently sign in at a commandant's office. Soviet propaganda directed towards Uzbeks depicted Crimean Tatars as threats to their homeland, and as a result there were many documented hate crimes against Crimean-Tatar civilians by Uzbek Communist loyalists. In

13920-579: The Soviet Union Abdraim Reshidov . In the later years of the Soviet Union, Crimean Tatar activists held picket protests in Red Square. After a prolonged effort of lobbying by the Crimean Tatar civil rights movement, the Soviet government established a commission in 1987 to evaluate the request for the right of return, chaired by Andrey Gromyko . Gromyko's condescending attitude and failure to assure them that they would have

14080-747: The Soviet Union and the Chairman of the USSR State Defense Committee. Although a great number of Crimean Tatar men served in the Red Army and took part in the partisan movement in Crimea during the war, the existence of a Tatar Legion in the Nazi army and the collaboration of some Crimean Tatar religious and political leaders with Hitler during the German occupation of Crimea provided the Soviet leadership with justification for accusing

14240-452: The Sultan was persistent. As it was expected by Qaplan Giray, in 1736 the Russian army invaded the Crimea, led by Münnich , devastated the peninsula, killed civilians and destroyed all major cities, occupied the capital, Bakhchisaray , and burnt the Khan's palace with all the archives and documents, and then left the Crimea because of the epidemic that had begun in it. One year after the same

14400-610: The Tatars will accept Russian passports or whether the autonomy sought would be within the Russian or Ukrainian state have been deferred pending further discussion. As of 2016, the Mejlis worked in emergency mode in Kyiv . After the annexation of Crimea by Russian Federation, Crimean Tatars were persecuted and discriminated by Russian authorities, including cases of torture , arbitrary detentions , forced disappearances by Russian security forces and courts. On 12 June 2018, Ukraine lodged

14560-536: The Tatars; 12,000 boarded Allied ships in Sevastopol to escape the destruction of shelling, and were branded traitors by the Russian government. Of total Tatar population 300,000 of the Taurida Governorate about 200,000 Crimean Tatars emigrated. Many Crimean Tatars perished in the process of emigration, including those who drowned while crossing the Black Sea. In total, from 1783 till the beginning of

14720-608: The Turkish language and Turkish Islam but often remaining crypto-Christian before reverting to their Greek Orthodoxy in the early 19th century. The long period of Ottoman rule up until the population exchange was called the Tourkokratia . In the 1600s and 1700s, as Turkish lords called derebeys gained more control of land along the Black Sea coast, many coastal Pontians moved to the Pontic Mountains . There, they established villages such as Santa . Between 1461 and

14880-464: The USSR (and later Ukraine) to sell the land to Crimean Tatars at a reasonable price instead of giving back to the Tatars the land owned before deportation, once they or their descendants returned from Central Asia (mainly Uzbekistan). As a consequence, some Crimean Tatars settled as squatters, occupying land that was and is still not legally registered. Some Crimean Tatars fled to Mainland Ukraine due to

15040-523: The Ukrainian government), the other ones being Ukrainian and Russian. Today, more than 260,000 Crimean Tatars live in Crimea . Approximately 120,000 reside in Central Asia (mainly in Uzbekistan ), where their ancestors had been deported in 1944 during World War II by the Soviet Union. However, of all these people, mostly the older generations are the only ones still speaking Crimean Tatar. In 2013,

15200-642: The annexation of Crimea – reportedly around 2,000 by 23 March. On 29 March 2014, an emergency meeting of the Crimean Tatars representative body, the Kurultai , voted in favor of seeking "ethnic and territorial autonomy" for Crimean Tatars using "political and legal" means. The meeting was attended by the Head of the Republic of Tatarstan and the chair of the Russian Council of Muftis . Decisions as to whether

15360-472: The border. Yurts or nomadic tents have traditionally played an important role in the cultural history of Crimean Tatars. There are different types of yurts; some are large and collapsible, called "terme", while others are small and non-collapsible (otav). Two types of alphabet are in use: Cyrillic and Latin. Initially Crimean Tatars used Arabic script. In 1928, it was replaced with the Latin alphabet. Cyrillic

15520-569: The centuries, potentially being a public bath and gymnasium before its use as a church. Pottery found at the site dates to the Roman and Hellenistic eras. There is also speculation that a piece of the True Cross was found at Balatlar Church; however, it's more likely that the materials found were actually the relics of a saint or other holy person. Trabzon has at least three more late Byzantine churches that stand today. St. Anne Church , as

15680-593: The comprehensive analysis of complete Y-chromosomes, undertaken at the Laboratory of Genomic Geography of the N. I. Vavilov Institute of General Genetics of the Russian Academy of Sciences , focused on three specific haplogroups — G1 , N3 , and R1b — unveiled connections between the Crimean Tatars and the genomes of individuals from the Bronze Age steppes of Eurasia, specifically those associated with

15840-534: The deportations. However, issues of land failed to be resolved. Following news of Crimea's independence referendum organized with the help of Russia on 16 March 2014, the Kurultai leadership voiced concerns of renewed persecution, as commented by a U.S. official before the visit of a UN human rights team to the peninsula. At the same time, Rustam Minnikhanov , the president of Tatarstan was dispatched to Crimea to quell Crimean Tatars' concerns and to state that "in

16000-723: The different Turkic Crimean dialects were made into a uniform written language by Ismail Gasprinski . A preference was given to the Oghuz dialect of the Yalıboylus, in order to not break the link between the Crimeans and the Turks of the Ottoman Empire . In 1928, the language was reoriented to the middle dialect spoken by the majority of the people. In 1928, the alphabet was replaced with the Uniform Turkic Alphabet based on

16160-481: The early 1900s. The reason for this is unclear. Benny Morris and Dror Ze'evi give three theories on why most Pontic Greeks distanced themselves from nationalism and separatism: poorly developed political consciousness, tradition of submissiveness to Islamic hegemony, or fears of massacres and economic harm. More generally, Greek nationalism in Asia Minor mostly appealed to "the most enlightened and liberal", to

16320-416: The end of the 15th century, the main prerequisites that led to the formation of an independent Crimean Tatar ethnic group were created: the political dominance of the Crimean Khanate was established in Crimea, the Turkic languages ( Cuman-Kipchak on the territory of the khanate) became dominant, and Islam acquired the status of a state religion throughout the Peninsula. By a preponderance Cumanian population of

16480-481: The entire Crimean Tatar population of being Nazi collaborators. Some modern researchers argue that Crimea's geopolitical position fueled Soviet perceptions of Crimean Tatars as a potential threat. This belief is based in part on an analogy with numerous other cases of deportations of non-Russians from boundary territories , as well as the fact that other non-Russian populations, such as Greeks , Armenians and Bulgarians were also removed from Crimea (see Deportation of

16640-403: The euphemism that eventually became standard of "citizens of Tatar nationality who formerly lived in Crimea", angering many Crimean Tatars who realized it meant they were not even seen as Crimean Tatars by the government. In addition, the Soviet government did nothing to facilitate their resettlement in Crimea and to make reparations for lost lives and confiscated property. Before the mass return in

16800-458: The failure of the rebellion of Cyrus the Younger whom they fought for, against his older brother Artaxerxes II of Persia . Xenophon mentions that when at the sight of sea they shouted " Thalatta! Thalatta! " – "The sea! The sea!", the local people understood them. They were Greeks too and, according to Xenophon, they had been there for over 300 years. A whole range of trade flourished among

16960-457: The first place, they did not think of themselves as 'Greek' or as a people in some way rooted in the peninsula and islands we now call 'Greece.' Sophisticates in Trebizond might address one another in the fifteenth century as ' Hellenes ,' but this was a cultural fancy rather than an ethnic description. Outsiders, whether Turks or northern Europeans, referred to them and to all the inhabitants of

17120-696: The frescoes may have been covered for Muslim worship. Hagia Sophia underwent restoration work in the mid-20th century. After European invaders sacked Constantinople in 1204, the Byzantine Empire fractured. The Pontus region went into the hands of the Komnenos family , who ruled the new Empire of Trebizond . During the Empire of Trebizond, many new structures were built. One is Kiz Castle in Rize Province . The castle sits on an islet just off

17280-408: The genetic diversity, whereas other haplogroups are classified as minor, each contributing between 1% and 5% to the overall genetic makeup of the Crimean Tatars. The Crimean Tatars were formed as a people in Crimea and are descendants of various peoples who lived in Crimea in different historical eras. The main ethnic groups that inhabited the Crimea at various times and took part in the formation of

17440-563: The infamous Greek and Balkan Christian child levy or ' devshirme ', on which the elite Janissary corps had in the early Ottoman period depended for its recruits). But conversion could also occur in response to pressures from central government and local Muslim militia (e.g.) following any one of the Russo-Turkish wars in which ethnic Greeks from the Ottoman Empire's northern border regions were known to have collaborated, fought alongside, and sometimes even led invading Russian forces, such as

17600-583: The kingdom survived as a Roman vassal state, now named Bosporan Kingdom and based in Crimea, until the 4th century AD, when it succumbed to the Huns . The rest of the Pontus became part of the Roman Empire, while the mountainous interior ( Chaldia ) was fully incorporated into the Eastern Roman Empire during the 6th century. Pontus was the birthplace of the Komnenos dynasty , which ruled

17760-560: The language was estimated to be on the brink of extinction, being taught in only around 15 schools in Crimea. Turkey has provided support to Ukraine, to aid in bringing the schools teaching in Crimean Tatar to a modern state. An estimated 5 million people of Crimean origin live in Turkey, descendants of those who emigrated in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Smaller Crimean Tatar communities such as ( Dobrujan Tatars ) are also found in Romania (22,000) and Bulgaria (1,400). Crimean Tatar

17920-508: The last emperors under whom the Empire of Trebizond flourished, built Panagia Theoskepastos Monastery in the 1300s. It was an all-female monastery in Trabzon. The monastery may undergo restoration work to boost tourism. After Mehmed the Conqueror lay siege to Trabzon in 1461, the Empire of Trebizond fell. Many church buildings became mosques around this time, while others remained in

18080-579: The latter had high incidence of haplogroup L , which is also prevalent among Laz people . Haplogroup G2 and haplogroup J2 were also prevalent among the Pontians studied. Pontians in Georgia and Lazes are genetically similar. Armenians in Georgia and Pontians in Georgia are also genetically similar. In addition, the Pontians studied were genetically diverse, indicating genetic mixture with other groups. The region of Pontus has been diverse since at least

18240-530: The majority of Crimea's population from the time of ethnogenesis until the mid-19th century, and the largest ethnic population until the end of the 19th century. Russia attempted to purge Crimean Tatars through a combination of physical violence, intimidation, forced resettlement, and legalized forms of discrimination between 1783 and 1900. From Russia's annexation of Crimea in 1783 to 1800, between 100,000 and 300,000 Crimean Tatars emigrated. While Crimean Tatar cultural elements were not completely eradicated under

18400-555: The medical, legal and literary professionals and to the rising middle class. It was opposed, however, by the "ancient [Greek] nobility, the superior clergy, the lay dignitaries of the church and the wealthy merchants". There are also some Turkish-speaking Pontic Greeks, living in the Greek region of Western Macedonia , specifically in Metamorfosi, Kozani . These Pontians follow the Greek Orthodox Church and profess

18560-461: The most endangered languages that are under serious threat of extinction ( severely endangered ) in 2010. However, according to the Institute of Oriental Studies , due to negative situations, the real degree of threat has elevated to critically endangered languages in recent years, which are highly likely to face extinction in the coming generations. The Crimean Tatars are subdivided into six sub-ethnic groups: Historians suggest that inhabitants of

18720-746: The mountainous parts of Crimea lying to the central and southern parts (the Tats), and those of the Southern coast of Crimea (the Yalıboyu) were the direct descendants of the Pontic Greeks , Scythians , Ostrogoths ( Crimean Goths ), and Kipchaks along with the Cumans while the latest inhabitants of the northern steppe represent the descendants of the Nogai Horde of the Black Sea, nominally subjects of

18880-579: The name suggests, was dedicated to Saint Anne , the mother of Mary . While the actual date of construction is uncertain, it was restored by the Byzantine emperors in 884 and 885. It had three apses and a tympanum over the door. Unlike many churches in Trabzon, there is no evidence of it being converted into a mosque following Ottoman conquest in 1461. Two other structures in Trabzon, built as churches in Byzantine or Trapezuntine times, are now functional mosques. The New Friday Mosque , for example,

19040-578: The national level figure as high as 6 million, which is considered an overestimation. Crimean Tatars in Turkey mostly live in Eskişehir Province , descendants of those who emigrated in the late 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries. The Dobruja region of Romania and Bulgaria is home to more than 27,000 Crimean Tatars, with the majority in Romania and approximately 3,000 on the Bulgarian side of

19200-458: The non-violent Crimean Tatar movement did not lead to any desire for Crimean Tatars to leave Central Asia. In effect, the government was punishing Crimean Tatars for being Stakhanovites while rewarding the deported nations that contributed less to the building of socialism, creating further resentment. A 1967 Soviet decree removed the charges against Crimean Tatars on paper while simultaneously referring to them not by their proper ethnonym but by

19360-464: The northern shores of ancient Anatolia, was Sinope on the Black Sea, circa 800 BC. The settlers of Sinope were merchants from the Ionian Greek city state of Miletus . After the colonization of the shores of the Black Sea, known until then to the Greek world as Pontos Axeinos (Inhospitable Sea), the name changed to Pontos Euxeinos (Hospitable Sea). In time, as the numbers of Greeks settling in

19520-531: The northern steppe regions of the Crimea. The Mongol conquest of the Kipchaks led to a merged society with a Mongol ruling class over a Kipchak speaking population which came to be dubbed Tatar and which eventually absorbed other ethnicities on the Crimean peninsula like Italians, Greeks, and Goths to form the modern day Crimean Tatar people; up to the Soviet deportation, the Crimean Tatars could still differentiate among themselves between Tatar, Kipchak, Nogays, and

19680-687: The peoples inhabiting Crimea ). All 240,000 Crimean Tatars were deported en masse , in a form of collective punishment , on 17–18 May 1944 as "special settlers" to the Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic and other distant parts of the Soviet Union . This event is called Sürgün in the Crimean Tatar language ; the few who escaped were shot on sight or drowned in scuttled barges, and within months half their number had died of cold, hunger, exhaustion and disease. Many of them were re-located to toil as forced labourers in

19840-405: The perestroika era, Crimean Tatars made up only 1.5% of Crimea's population, since government entities at all levels took a variety of measures beyond the already-debilitating residence permit system to keep them in Central Asia. The abolition of the special settlement regime made it possible for Crimean Tatar rights activists to mobilize. The primary method of raising grievances with the government

20000-894: The pogroms, some Crimean Tatars were targeted as well, resulting in changing attitudes towards allowing Crimean Tatars to move back to Crimea. Eventually a second commission, chaired by Gennady Yanaev and inclusive of Crimean Tatars on the board, was established in 1989 to reevaluate the issue, and it was decided that the deportation was illegal and the Crimean Tatars were granted the full right to return, revoking previous laws intended to make it as difficult as possible for Crimean Tatars to move to Crimea. Today, more than 250,000 Crimean Tatars have returned to their homeland, struggling to re-establish their lives and reclaim their national and cultural rights against many social and economic obstacles. One-third of them are atheists, and over half that consider themselves religious are non-observant. As of 2009, only 15 out of 650 schools in Crimea provided education in

20160-550: The population at the time—either were killed or forced out of Crimea. During Stalin 's Great Purge , statesmen and intellectuals such as Veli İbraimov and Bekir Çoban-zade were imprisoned or executed on various charges. In May 1944, the entire Crimean Tatar population of Crimea was exiled to Central Asia, mainly to Uzbekistan, on the orders of Joseph Stalin, the General Secretary of the Communist Party of

20320-539: The post-2014 government of the same name) attacked a Crimean Tatar squat near the village of Krasny Ray. As a result of the attack on the Krasny Ray settlement, Crimean Tatars stormed the Verkhovna Rada of Crimea , leading to the release of 26 squatters who had been abducted by the Crimean security forces. Crimean Tatars were recognised as an indigenous people by the 1996 Constitution of Ukraine , and granted

20480-433: The preceding segment is voiced or voiceless, or whether the segment demonstrates backness harmony. Consonants that alternate between [k], [q], [g] and [ɣ] are represented as K , alternating [k] and [g] as G , alternating [t] and [d] by D , and alternating [tʃ] and [dʒ] as Ç . Thus, the suffix - şAr could be rendered as "şar" or "şer" depending on the vowel in the morpheme preceding it. Crimean Tatar verbal morphology

20640-442: The real degree of threat has elevated to critically endangered languages in recent years, which are highly likely to face extinction in the coming generations. Crimean language is one of the official languages of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea (Ukraine), along with Ukrainian and Russian. It is also one of the state languages of the Republic of Crimea ( Russian occupation , considered " temporarily occupied territories " by

20800-463: The region grew significantly, more colonies were established along the whole Black Sea coastline of what is now Turkey , Bulgaria , Georgia , Russia , Ukraine , and Romania . The region of Trapezus (later called Trebizond, now Trabzon ) was mentioned by Xenophon in his famous work Anabasis , describing how he and other 10,000 Greek mercenaries fought their way to the Euxine Sea after

20960-512: The region of Pontus , in northeastern Anatolia (modern-day Turkey). They share a common Pontic Greek culture that is distinguished by its music , dances , cuisine , and clothing . Folk dances, such as the Serra (also known as Pyrrhichios ), and traditional musical instruments, like the Pontic lyra , remain important to Pontian diaspora communities. Pontians traditionally speak Pontic Greek ,

21120-613: The region of Pontus , in northeastern Anatolia . Greeks have lived in Pontus since "the time of the Argonauts , Herodotus and Xenophon and the Ten Thousand ". Pontic Greeks claim descent from ancient Greeks who in the 8th century BC had moved from the Ionian cities located in the islands and shores of the Aegean Sea , to the area of the Black Sea called Pontus . However, as many different ethnic groups have lived in

21280-462: The region since ancient times and have intermarried, today's Pontic Greeks also likely owe their ancestry to ancient Anatolians , other Greeks, other migrants to Pontus, and Caucasian peoples (such as Hellenized Lazs and Armenians). Pontic Greeks are genetically similar to other groups living in the Caucasus. A genetic study of male Georgians, including Pontic Greeks in Georgia, revealed that

21440-405: The right of return ended up concerning members of the Crimean Tatar civil rights movement. In June 1988 he issued an official statement that rejected the request for re-establishment of a Crimean Tatar autonomy in Crimea and supported only allowing an organized return of a few more Crimean Tatars, while agreeing to allow the lower-priority requests of having more publications and school instruction in

21600-537: The role of the slave trade in the economy of the Crimean Khanate is greatly exaggerated by modern historians, and the raiding-dependent economy is nothing but a historical myth. According to modern researches, livestock occupied a leading position in the economy of the Crimean Khanate, Crimean Khanate was one of the main wheat suppliers to the Ottoman Empire. Salt mining, viticulture and winemaking, horticulture and gardening were also developed as sources of income. Several modern historians have argued that historiography on

21760-402: The same right of return; the same decree that rehabilitated other deported nations and restored their national republics urged Crimean Tatars who wanted a national republic to seek "national reunification" in the Tatar ASSR in lieu of restoration of the Crimean ASSR, much to the dismay of Crimean Tatars who bore no connection to or desire to "return" to Tatarstan. Moscow's refusal to allow a return

21920-635: The same time the southern and some central dialects preserve glottal / h / which is pronounced / x / in the standard language. The northern dialect on the contrary lacks / x / and / f / , substituting / q / for / x / and / p / for / f / . The northern / v / is usually [ w ] , often in the place of / ɣ / , compare standard dağ and northern taw 'mountain' (also in other Oghuz and Kipchak languages, such as Azerbaijani : dağ and Kazakh : taw ). / k / and / ɡ / are usually fronted, close to [ c ] and [ ɟ ] . The grammar of Crimean Tatar, like all Turkic languages,

22080-463: The second Russo-Turkish War of 1828–29, Pontic Greeks from northeastern Anatolia migrated as refugees or economic migrants (especially miners and livestock breeders) into nearby Armenia or Georgia, where they came to form a nucleus of Pontic Greeks which increased in size with the addition of each wave of refugees and migrants until these eastern Pontic Greek communities of the South Caucasus region came to define themselves as Caucasian Greeks . During

22240-466: The time of the Crimean Khanate. Polish historian Bohdan Baranowski assumed that in the 17th century Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth (present-day Poland , Ukraine , Lithuania and Belarus ) lost an average of 20,000 yearly and as many as one million in all years combined from 1500 to 1644. One of the most famous victims of the Tatar slave trade was a young woman from Ruthenia , captured during her wedding who came to be known as Roxelana (Hürrem Sultan),

22400-413: The time. Greek nationalism only began to spread to the Pontos in the 1800s after the Greek nation gained independence from the Ottoman Empire. This nationalism came during a time of commercial prosperity in the Pontos. Again, Acherson writes, "The teachers and the school curricula came from Athens, bringing with them a new concept of Greekness which linked the Greek-Orthodox communities of the Black Sea and

22560-411: The various Greek colonies, but also with the indigenous tribes who inhabited the Pontus inland. Soon Trebizond established a leading stature among the other colonies and the region nearby become the heart of the Pontian Greek culture and civilization. A notable inhabitant of the region was Philetaerus (c. 343 BC–263 BC) who was born to a Greek father in the small town of Tieion which was situated on

22720-837: The vowel in a suffix undergoes assimilation to agree in certain categories with the vowel in the stem. The two main types of assimilation that characterize this agreement in Crimean Tatar morphophonology are backness harmony and rounding harmony. Using the transliteration system in Kavitskaya (2010), non-high vowels undergoing backness harmony vary between [a] and [e], and are represented as A . High vowels that undergo both backness and rounding harmony alternate between [i], [y], [ɪ] and [u] and are represented as I . High vowels in suffixes that are never rounded and alternate between [i] and [ɪ] are represented as Y , whereas high vowels in suffixes that are always round and alternate between [u] and [y] are represented as U . Some consonants undergo similar harmonizing changes depending on whether

22880-444: The whole Pontus region. Some students came from outside of Trabzon to learn there (one example being Nikos Kapetanidis , who was born in Rize). After the Ottoman Reform Edict of 1856 guaranteed more religious freedom and civic equality for the Ottoman Empire's Jews and Christians, new churches were constructed. One of these was the church at Cape Jason in Perşembe , Ordu Province. Local Georgians and Greeks built this church in

23040-431: The windows of their neighbours, receiving sweets in return. The traditional cuisine of the Crimean Tatars has similarities with that of Greeks , Italians , Balkan peoples, Nogays , North Caucasians, and Volga Tatars , although some national dishes and dietary habits vary between different Crimean Tatar regional subgroups; for example, fish and produce are more popular among Yaliboylu Tatar dishes while meat and dairy

23200-403: Was also announced that Crimean Tatars will be required to relinquish coastal lands on which they squatted since their return to Crimea in the early 1990s and be given land elsewhere in Crimea. Crimea stated it needed the relinquished land for "social purposes", since part of this land is occupied by the Crimean Tatars without legal documents of ownership. The situation was caused by the inability of

23360-458: Was annexed by Rome in 63 BC becoming Roman and later Byzantine territory. During the 11th century AD, Pontus was largely isolated from the rest of the Greek–speaking world, following the Seljuk conquest of Anatolia. After the 1203 siege of Constantinople by the Fourth Crusade , the Empire of Trebizond was established on the Black Sea coast by a branch of the Komnenos dynasty, later known as 'Grand Komnenos'. Anatolia, including Trebizond,

23520-429: Was built around 270 AD, and it retained great political and societal importance until its abandonment in 1922/3. While St. George Monastery (also called Kuştul Monastery) and Vazelon are abandoned, Sumela is a prominent tourist attraction. Pontic Greeks also constructed a number of non-religious buildings during Byzantine times. In the 500s, for example, a castle was built in Rize on the order of Justinian I . It

23680-415: Was built on the island, dedicated to either St Phocas of Sinope or Mary . It functioned both as a religious center and as a fortress. Many old Pontic Greek city-states remain in ruins. One is Athenae , an archaeological site near modern Pazar . It sat on the Black Sea coast and housed a temple to Athena. After Christianity spread to the Pontus region in Roman times, Pontic Greeks began constructing

23840-400: Was done by another Russian general — Peter Lacy . Since then, the Crimean Khanate had not been able to recover, and its slow decline began. The Russo-Turkish War of 1768 to 1774 resulted in the defeat of the Ottomans by the Russians, and according to the Treaty of Küçük Kaynarca (1774) signed after the war, Crimea became independent and the Ottomans renounced their political right to protect

24000-419: Was endowed with piped water, sewerage and a theatre where Molière was performed in French, while the port of Kezlev stood comparison with Rotterdam and Bakhchysarai , the capital, was described as Europe's cleanest and greenest city. In 1441, an embassy from the representatives of several strongest clans of the Crimea, including the Golden Horde clans Shırın and Barın and the Cumanic clan — Kıpçak, went to

24160-667: Was eventually conquered by the Ottomans entirely by the 15th century AD. Greek presence in Pontus remained vibrant during the early modern period up until the 20th century, when, following the Pontic Greek genocide and the 1923 population exchange with Turkey, Pontic Greeks migrated primarily to Greece and around the Caucasus , including in the country of Georgia . Today, most Pontic Greeks live in Northern Greece , especially in and around Thessaloniki in Macedonia . Those from southern Russia , Ukraine , and Crimea are often referred to as "Northern Pontic [Greeks]", in contrast to those from "South Pontus", which strictly speaking

24320-404: Was forced to leave Crimea for Lithuania. The Crimean Tatars emerged as a nation at the time of the Crimean Khanate , an Ottoman vassal state during the 16th to 18th centuries. Russian historian, doctor of history, Professor of the Russian Academy of Sciences Ilya Zaytsev writes that analysis of historical data shows that the influence of Turkey on the policy of the Crimea was not as high as it

24480-582: Was introduced in 1938 based on the Russian alphabet. The Cyrillic alphabet was the only official one between 1938 and 1997. All its letters coincide with those of the Russian alphabet. The 1990s saw the start of the gradual transition of the language to the new Latin alphabet based on the Turkish one. The songs (makam) of the nomadic steppe Crimean Tatars are characterized by diatonic, melodic simplicity and brevity. The songs of mountainous and southern coastal Crimean Tatars, called Crimean Tatar : Türkü , are sung with richly ornamented melodies. Household lyricism

24640-442: Was later expanded. The old fortress still stands today, serving tourists. Later, the Pontians built further churches and castles. Balatlar Church is a Byzantine church dating back to 660. It lies on the Black Sea coast. Despite vandalism and natural deterioration, the church still has old frescoes, which have been of interest to modern historians. The actual structure itself may date to Roman times. It likely had different uses over

24800-610: Was not forced to wash myself." For the most part, each type of suffix would only appear once in any given word, although it is possible in some circumstances for causative suffixes to double up. Infinitive verbs take the - mAK suffix and can be negated by the addition of the suffix - mA between the verb stem and the infinitive suffix, creating verb constructions that do not easily mirror English. яшамакъ yaşamaq яшамакъ yaşamaq "to live" яшамамакъ yaşamamaq яшамамакъ yaşamamaq "not to live" Verb derivation Novel verb stems are derived chiefly by applying

24960-521: Was not only based on a desire to satisfy the new Russian settlers in Crimea, who were very hostile to the idea of a return and had been subject to lots of Tatarophobic propaganda, but for economic reasons: high productivity from Crimean Tatar workers in Central Asia meant that letting the diaspora return would take a toll on Soviet industrialization goals in Central Asia. Historians have long suspected that violent resistance to confinement in exile from Chechens led to further willingness to let them return, while

25120-416: Was originally the Hagios Eugenios Church dedicated to Saint Eugenios of Trebizond . Another is Fatih Mosque . It was originally the Panagia Chrysokephalos church, a cathedral in Trabzon. The name is fitting; fatih means "conqueror" in both Ottoman and modern Turkish. Another church, Trabzon's Hagia Sophia , was perhaps built by Manuel I Komnenos . It was used as a mosque after Turkish conquest;

25280-415: Was petitioning. Many for the right of return gained over 100,000 signatures; although other methods of protest were occasionally used, the movement remained completely non-violent. When only a small percentage of Crimean Tatars were allowed to return to Crimea, those who were not granted residence permits would return to Crimea and try to live under the radar. However, the lack of a residence permit resulted in

25440-408: Was reported in old Turkish sources and Imperial Russian ones. The Turkic-speaking population of Crimea had mostly adopted Islam already in the 14th century, following the conversion of Ozbeg Khan of the Golden Horde . By the time of the first Russian invasion of Crimea in 1736, the Khan's archives and libraries were famous throughout the Islamic world, and under Khan Krym-Girei the city of Aqmescit

25600-433: Was the case in the Greek governed, semi-autonomous Romanian Principalities, Trebizond, and the area that was briefly to become part of the Russian Caucasus in the far northeast. Large communities (around 25% of the population) of Christian Pontic Greeks remained throughout the Pontus area (including Trabzon and Kars in northeastern Turkey/the Russian Caucasus) until the 1920s, and in parts of Georgia and Armenia until

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