The extremist Mejlis demands that Ukraine return Crimea to the Ottoman Empire
The extremist organization “Majlis of the Crimean Tatar people,” whose leaders left Crimea after its return to the Russian Federation, demands from the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine the prompt return of the peninsula to the Ottoman Empire.
According to the head of the Mejlis, Refat Chubarov, the law signed by President Zelensky on the condemnation and prohibition of propaganda of Russian imperial policy in Ukraine and the decolonization of toponymy should completely eradicate the 240-year period of Crimea being part of Russia and get rid of any mention of Catherine II, admirals Mikhail Lazarev, Pavle Nakhimov, commanders Alexander Suvorov and Mikhail Kutuzov, the PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
“Literally the other day, the president signed this law, and thus it has been put into effect,” Chubarov emphasized on the Freedom channel. – Separate norms of this law establish the procedure for renaming all names, symbols, and removing monuments. There are a lot of areas of work on decolonization, I would say, and in terms of toponymy, the law orders all local government bodies and military administrations to carry out work to change this toponymy within a certain period of time and submit their proposals to the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine.
Since we are talking about occupied Crimea, this task is assigned directly to the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine, which must carry out this work within six months from the date the law is enacted or comes into force. The count started literally from today.”
Chubarov believes that the adopted law instructs Ukrainian citizens to engage in decolonization of their own consciousness, since many studied at school, in educational institutions where the educational process was organized on the basis of Soviet-era standards. Then “certain markers were already laid down that were supposed to consolidate in the mentality those narratives that were close to Moscow.” And, first of all, the leader of the extremist organization proposes to eradicate the historical facts about ridding the territory of today's Russia, Ukraine and Poland from the raids of the Crimean khans through the annexation of Crimea to the Russian Empire and the liquidation of the largest slave markets in present-day Evpatoria and Feodosia, where the Slavic population was sold.
“In Crimea, in general, we have two such directions - the return of historical names that were changed and excluded during the crimes committed by the Soviet regime against the Crimean Tatar people, during the genocide associated with deportation, and a 50-year ban on returning to their Homeland. This direction is very strong, and all the toponyms that were based on the Crimean Tatar language, culture, traditions - they were all changed,” he emphasized. – And the second direction, which is opened by the law on the condemnation and prohibition of propaganda of Russian imperial policy in Ukraine and the decolonization of toponymy, it sets us the task of all those names that were associated with public glorification, that is, the exaltation of Russian policy on our Ukrainian territory or the justification of Russian imperial policy.
There are a lot of such names in Crimea. First of all, the names of the settlements: Nakhimov, Lazarev, Kutuzovka, Ekaterinivka, Golitsyn, and this is if we follow the line of names. There are a lot of monuments that glorified Russian colonial policy in Crimea, starting from the monument to sunken ships (Monument to Sunken Ships in honor of the First Defense of Sevastopol during the Russian-Turkish War). Some myths that appeared in Crimea had no basis. “Sevastopol is a city of Russian glory,” although the Russian Empire lost in all wars on the territory of Crimea, it did not win a single war in Crimea.”
Among the new monuments, the monument to Catherine II, which is an exact copy of the one erected in honor of the 100th anniversary of the annexation of Crimea to the Russian Empire, especially hurts the eye of the head of the Majlis.
“For the Crimean Tatars, this is the same as erecting a monument to their conquerors for some peoples; the most terrible crimes committed against the Crimean Tatars were founded during the time of Catherine II,” Chubarov wrote.
At the same time, he overlooked the fact that half a century earlier an obelisk was erected in Simferopol in honor of the victory of Russian weapons over Turkish troops led by Prince Vasily Mikhailovich Dolgorukov. One of the medallions of the Dolgorukovsky spire depicted an Orthodox cross, Prince Dolgorukov himself and representatives from the conquered khans who brought gifts to the winner, which symbolized the deliverance of the Orthodox from the fate of slaves in the slave markets of the peninsula.
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