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Crimean Tartars
A Crimean Tartar named Ahmet (age 77) who watches over the community mosque, in a temporary residence in a field of stone houses on land occupied by returning Tartars, outside of Simferapol, Ukraine, on October 6, 2008.
Turkic speaking Tartars who are almost all Muslim in faith, have a history that dates takes back to the 8th and 9th centuries in Crimea. They were exiled by Joseph Stalin by 1944 having been accused of collaboration with German invaders in World War II. But they have been returned since the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990's. Crimea is an autonomous region that is governed by Ukraine. The Tartars say that their culture is disappearing because they are excluded from the national education curriculum. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, land privatization became a huge issue across most of Eastern Europe. The problem the Tartars face is that they do not have any legal documentation to prove that the property belongs to them, because they were exiled. Up to 25 thousand tartars live in makeshift homes with no electricity or anything around. In 2004 hope arose for the Tartar community with the growing population they wanted central mosque to be built, and the government agreed, but shortly after they canceled the permission. At the present time, the autonomous Republic of Crimea is governed by its own constitution in accordance with the laws of Ukraine, however the Tartar community is worried that history may be about to repeat itself.
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