The Transformation of the Crimean Tatars’ Institutions and Discourses After 2014

Abstract

The article deals with the transformation of the Crimean Tatars’ institutions and discourses after the 2014 conflict around Crimea. It shows the change in the balance of power of traditional institutions such as Mejlis and Muftiyat , which for many years represented secular and religious components of Crimean Tatars’ ethnic identity. It tells how the Mejlis was dismissed from the political stage in Crimea, while the Muftiyat has enjoyed a great support by new authorities. This transformation and threats to societal security inevitably led to reassessment of previous views and goals of the main actors in the Crimean Tatar community and the formation of new institutions with hybrid composition and discourse. The article focuses on organization such as ‘Crimean solidarity,’ which was formed in 2016 as a reaction to authorities’ pressure over the Crimean Tatars. Using discourse analysis of statements of activists of this organization and content analysis of social media, the author presents the main topics of its discourse and types of activity. She shows how the traditional Islamic discourse of activists of this organization has been transformed by the incorporation of the main concepts of secular discourse developed by the Mejlis . The author argues that the appearance of ‘Crimean solidarity’ indicates the blurring of lines between secular and religious, and ethnic and Islamic in the Crimean Tatar society. It shows how people with different backgrounds and agendas manage to leave their differences aside to support each other in the face of a common threat.

Full text

44
The Transformation of the Crimean Tatars’
Institutions and Discourses After 2014
Elmira Muratova
Crimean Federal University
Abstract
e article deals with the transformation of the Crimean Tatars’ institutions
and discourses after the 2014 conict around Crimea. It shows the change in
the balance of power of traditional institutions such as Mejlis and Muftiyat,
which for many years represented secular and religious components of
Crimean Tatars’ ethnic identity. It tells how the Mejlis was dismissed from
the political stage in Crimea, while the Muftiyat has enjoyed a great support
by new authorities. is transformation and threats to societal security
inevitably led to reassessment of previous views and goals of the main actors
in the Crimean Tatar community and the formation of new institutions with
hybrid composition and discourse. e article focuses on organization such as
‘Crimean solidarity,’ which was formed in 2016 as a reaction to authorities’
pressure over the Crimean Tatars. Using discourse analysis of statements of
activists of this organization and content analysis of social media, the author
presents the main topics of its discourse and types of activity. She shows how
the traditional Islamic discourse of activists of this organization has been
transformed by the incorporation of the main concepts of secular discourse
developed by the Mejlis. e author argues that the appearance of ‘Crimean
solidarity’ indicates the blurring of lines between secular and religious, and
ethnic and Islamic in the Crimean Tatar society. It shows how people with
dierent backgrounds and agendas manage to leave their dierences aside to
support each other in the face of a common threat.
Keywords
Crimean Tatars; Transformation; Hybridity; Institutions; Discourses; Mejlis;
Muftiyat; Crimean Solidarity
Introduction
e Crimean Tatars’ fate after the 2014 Crimea’s annexation by Russia is
gradually becoming an object of studies. Some of them pay tribute to the
complexity of the relationship between the Crimean Tatars and Russian state
due to certain de velopments in the past. ese were the rst Cri mea’s annexat ion
© 2019 Elmira Mu ratova, publis hed by Sciendo.
is work i s licensed unde r the Creative Co mmons Attribut ion-NonCommerci al-NoDerivs 4. 0 License.
Journal of Nationalism, Memory & Language Politics
Volume 13 Issue 1  DOI 10.2478/jnmlp-2019-0006
* Elmira Muratova, Department of Political Science and International Relations, Faculty of Philosophy,
Crimean Federal University, Prospekt Vernadskogo 4, Simferopol, Crimea. e article has been writ-
ten as the part of the research project within the Freedom Chair Fellowship of the Prague Civil Society
Center (2018); murelmira@googlemail.com.

45
Elmira Muratova
The Transformation of the Crimean Tatars’ Institutions and Discourses After 2014
© 2019 Elmira Mu ratova, publis hed by Sciendo.
is work i s licensed unde r the Creative Co mmons Attribut ion-NonCommerci al-NoDerivs 4. 0 License.
by the Russian Empire in 1783 and the deportation of the Crimean Tatars by
the Soviet regime in May 1944, which are crucial for shaping the Crimean
Tatars’ perception of Russian policy in contemporary Crimea. Some authors
discuss the importance of these events in the development of victimization
narratives and political mobilization of the Crimean Tatars (Nikolko 2018,
Ozcelik 2015). ey point to the change in the politics of memory in annexed
Crimea, where “depolitization together with generalization of the memorial
dates and events is followed by unication of memorial practices” (Nikolko
2018, 88). Nikolko stressed that the repressive trends developing in Crimea
provided a very little hope for fair research and public discussion of the
traumatic past in Crimea. According to her, the “new authorities returned
to the 1994 interpretation of the event, when May 18 was set as day of
commemoration of the deportation’s victims without any particular ethnic
connotation. e Soviet discourse of ignorance of the trauma of a particular
indigenous ethnic group was revitalized once again” (Nikolko 2018, 89).
Buhari-Gulmez’ study focuses on the Crimean Tatar self-determination
movement showing the discursive shift from “deportation crisis” to
“annexation crisis” in the Crimean Tatar community, including the diaspora.
She argued that since 2014 Crimean Tatars tend to represent the Russian
annexation of Crimea as “the crisis” referring to the deinstitutionalization of
Crimean Tatar political agency in Crimea and the increasing “invisibility”
of Crimean Tatar self-determination claims given the ongoing “hegemonic
struggles” over who represents Crimean Tatars (Buhari-Gulmez 2018, 219-
220).
Žídková and Melichar, using the framework of societal security (sustainable
development of traditional patterns of language, culture, and national
identity), argued that, based on the proclamations by the leaders and
interviews with ordinary Crimean Tatars, “there is no doubt that the majority
of Tatars feels threatened” (Žídková and Melichar 2015, 102). ey presented
examples of Russia’s pressure over the Crimean Tatars and argued that several
necessary conditions to precipitate fear within societal groups can be found
in the Crimea: negative group stereotypes, threatened ethnic symbols (ags,
statues), and a threatened demographic situation (Žídková and Melichar
2015, 104). ey also raised the questions of how can the Crimean Tatar
society react to these threats to their identity and why does the Crimean Tatar
resistance remain nonviolent? According to Žídková and Melichar, there are
several reasons for nonviolent resistance. First, the Crimean Tatars constitute
roughly twelve percent of the Crimean population, and any attempt to start
an armed resistance would result in ultimate failure against the superior

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Journal of Nationalism, Memory & Language Politics 13(1)
military power of the Russian majority. Second, no paramilitary organization
exists that would safeguard the interests of the Crimean Tatars. ird, the
Crimean authorities, as well as the Russian army, would undoubtedly use this
opportunity to introduce even harsher repressions against the Tatar minority.
Fourth, most of the societal threats in Crimea are connected with legal or
bureaucratic discrimination, which as a rule provokes nonmilitary responses
(Žídková and Melichar 2015, 105).
Other scholars have also shown an interest in the ways of the Crimean Tatars’
actual and future resistance to Russia. Ozcelik has analyzed them within
the framework of conict analysis and peace studies elds, paying particular
attention to the nonviolent nature of the Crimean Tatar National Movement
as a prerequisite for peaceful resistance in nowadays Crimea (Ozcelik 2015,
12). Among other factors, Ozcelik pointed to the small size of the Crimean
Tatar nation, the embodiment of nonviolence in the Crimean Tatar popular
culture, and their close historical ties to the Soviet dissident movements
(Ozcelik 2015, 14).
Besides victimization narratives and ways of resistance, some attention has
also been paid to identity and institutional changes within the Crimean
Tatar people, particularly to the divide and rule policy (Wilson 2017) and
relationships of the Crimean Tatar’s Mejlis and Muftiyat with new Crimean
authorities and each other (Muratova 2016). ese studies have shown the rise
of tensions between these two institutions as cooperation between Muftiyat
and authorities was increasing while the Mejlis was pushed out of the political
sphere of Crimea. Wilson has paid attention to various identity politics in
Crimea and Ukraine saying that the biggest impact of the Crimean Tatar
issue since 2014 has been on helping to reshape Ukrainian national identity
and nationalism (Wilson 2017, 45).
While scholarship on post-2014 developments in Crimea provides a general
picture of the situation, there are important issues that have not received
their coverage yet. Among them is the transformation of the Crimean Tatar
institutions and discourses and their hybridization, which is understood as
the formation of new institutions with mixed, heterogeneous composition
and discourse. is process, based on discourse analysis of statements of
members of “Crimean solidarity” (Krymskaya solidarnost’) and content
analysis of media, is the focus of this article. e main research questions can
be formulated in the following way: what are the structural and ideological
components of ‘Crimean solidarity’ as a hybrid organization and how eective
is it in satisfying the community’s needs in a time of the post-2014 crisis?

47
Elmira Muratova
The Transformation of the Crimean Tatars’ Institutions and Discourses After 2014
e article is organized in the following manner. First, I provide an overview
of the theoretical concepts of hybridity and hybrid organization in the context
of third-sector research. Second, I give a general picture of institutional
development within the Crimean Tatar community after repatriation, by
showing the Mejlis and Muftiyat’s positions and discourses. ird, I discuss
changes in relations between these two institutions and their inuence on the
Crimean Tatars after the 2014 Crimea’s annexation. Finally, in the fourth part
of the article, I show the transformation of the Crimean Tatars’ institutions
and discourses on the example of ‘Crimean solidarity’ organization. In
conclusion, I go back to the concept of hybridity to summarize my thoughts
on the current and future developments around the ‘Crimean solidarity’.
Hybridity and Hybrid Organizations in the Context of Third-Sector
Research
e concept of hybridity is well known in a variety of disciplines, from
linguistics, cultural studies, and technology to biology. e term ‘hybridity’
has been used on various occasions and, as Bassi states, became one of the
crossborder concepts able to ‘pollinate’ to ‘fertilize’ dierent elds of thought
and to open new frontiers in the development of knowledge (Bassi 2014,
397). In social evolution theory, the term ‘hybridity’ traditionally carried
the connotation of being ‘impure,’ ‘rationally contaminated,’ and genetically
‘deviant’ but in the late twentieth century has been reappropriated to signal
cultural synthesis (Ifekwunigwe 1999, 188). In the recent decades, hybridity
is used within cultural and postcolonial studies, and the term is often related
to studies of diasporas, immigration, and biculturalism, and questions about
new identities and ethnicities (Pelliccia 2017, 55).
In this paper, the concept of hybridity applies to the organizational level.
Hybridity, together with hybrid organizations, appears as a multidimensional
concept that is discussed within dierent contexts. In the nonprot sector (i.e.
third sector) studies, hybridity typically refers to the complex organizational
forms that arise as voluntary, charitable, and community organizations
confront dierentiated task, legitimacy, or resource environments (Skelcher
and Smith 2015, 433). Many scholars agree that hybridity in the third sector
is not a new phenomenon. For many years, some organizations have moved
into hybridity in a rather gentle manner, causing minor disturbances but
not necessarily calling into question their basic third-sector identity (Billis
2010, 60). Some even argue that the third-sector organizations are inherently
hybrids because they tend to contain dierent missions and values connected
to the community, markets, and the state (Smith 2010, 220).

48
Journal of Nationalism, Memory & Language Politics 13(1)
Although in each disciplinary context hybridity means something dierent in
detail, a basic denition is common to all of them: “a mixture of essentially
contradictory and conicting elements” (Brandsen and Karré 2011, 828).
Scholars tend to agree that hybrid organizations contain mixed sectoral,
legal, structural, and/or mission-related elements (Smith 2010, 220). ey
are therefore seen as “heterogeneous arrangements, characterized by mixtures
of pure and incongruous origins, (ideal)types, ‘cultures,’ ‘coordination
mechanisms,’ ‘rationalities,’ or ‘action logics” (Brandsen et al. 2005, 750).
Scholars believe that it is very likely that hybrid organizations spring up in
response to periods of crises (economic, political, social, etc.) (Bassi 2014, 399)
or ‘environmental uncertainty’ (Smith 2010, 220) when traditional solutions
to broad social problems do not seem to address the challenges introduced
by the new institutional environment. Often hybrids are better able to adapt
to turbulent environments than the two original (pure) organizational forms
from which they originate (Bassi 2014, 400). e essential combination of
dierent organizational principles proves to be advantageous and allows them
to react more exible and without being tied to one specic logic of action.
eorizing hybridity, scholars attempted to propose typologies of hybrids in
the third sector. us, Billis oers the concepts of (a) ‘shallow’ and ‘entrenched’
hybrids and (b) ‘organic’ and ‘enacted’ hybrids. e ‘shallow hybrid’ is an
organization in which the process of hybridization is very low, light, or
supercial. Alternatively, an ‘entrenched hybrid’ is an organization in which
the process of hybridization is very profound and deep and involves both the
governance and operational levels of the organization (Billis 2010, 59). e
‘organic hybrid’ is an organization that is born as a pure, single-sector type
(public, private, and third sector) moving slowly, during its life cycle, toward
a more hybrid organizational form. e ‘enacted hybrid’, in contrast, is an
organization that from the beginning is established as a hybrid (Billis 2010,
61). Billis hypothesized that nowadays we are facing a double movement from
‘shallow hybrid’ to ‘entrenched hybrid’ and from ‘organic hybrid’ to ‘enacted
hybrid’ (Billis 2010, 65).
Skelcher and Smith argued that hybridization arises from a plurality of
rationalities – which they termed ‘institutional logics’ (Skelcher and Smith
2015, 434). ey viewed hybridization as a process in which plural logics and
thus actor identities are in play within an organization, leading to several
possible organizational outcomes. Based on this, they proposed ve types of
hybrids: segmented, segregated, assimilated, blended, and blocked (Skelcher
and Smith 2015, 440). In the assimilated hybrid, which is used in this article
to describe the ‘Crimean solidarity’ organization, the core or original logic

49
Elmira Muratova
The Transformation of the Crimean Tatars’ Institutions and Discourses After 2014
remains but the organization adopts some of the practices and symbols of
a new logic. e organization reects the expectations of the new logic in
terms of its structure, symbols, and language but in its day-to-day practice
continues to operate in line with its institutional origins (Skelcher and Smith
2015, 441-442).
e concept of hybridity in this paper is used to describe the transformation
of the traditional Crimean Tatar institutions and discourses in the situation
of crisis and uncertainty caused by the 2014 annexation of Crimea. Hybridity
here is understood as the blurring of boundaries between (a) secular and
religious and (b) ethnic and Islamic in the Crimean Tatar community. As the
last part of the paper shows, the ‘Crimean solidarity’ as a hybrid organization
appeared to present more eective in serving the community’s needs model of
organization compared to other institutions with more ‘pure’ nature.
The Main Crimean Tatar Institutions and Discourses After Repatriation
After the return of the Crimean Tatar people from the places of deportation
to Crimea in the early 1990s, they managed to create a fairly eective system
of ethnic institutions to deal with political, legal, socioeconomic, and religious
issues of repatriates (Shevel 2000, 9-10). Among these institutions, the most
inuential were the Mejlis of the Crimean Tatar people and the Spiritual
Administration of Muslims of Crimea (SAMC; Dukhovnoe upravlenie
musul’man Kryma), which represented two components of Crimean Tatars’
ethnic identity – secular and religious.
e Mejlis has functioned as a representative body of the Crimean Tatars both
in relations to the Ukrainian state, where the Crimean Tatars found themselves
after repatriation, and to the foreign states and organizations. It was elected by
the national congress of the Crimean Tatars (Qurultai) for a term of ve years,
which allowed its leaders to speak on behalf of the entire Crimean Tatar people
(Osipov 2014, 5). For a long time, the Mejlis dened the main outlines of the
Crimean Tatar agenda – people’s attitude toward political events and actors and
socioeconomic and cultural processes in Crimea and Ukraine. Although there
was opposition to the Mejlis within the Crimean Tatar community, the level of
its legitimacy has traditionally been high. Moreover, for many Crimean Tatars
in the situation of absence of their national statehood, the Mejlis represented
an ethnic ‘government’ to which they addressed their expectations and claims
(Kouts and Muratova 2014, 38-41).
e Mejlis was a secular institution, the main ideology of which was
the Crimean Tatar nationalism. Its leaders expressed their wish for self-
determination in the 1991 Declaration of National Sovereignty of the

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Journal of Nationalism, Memory & Language Politics 13(1)
Crimean Tatar people, which declared that “Crimea is a national territory
of the Crimean Tatar people, on which they alone possess the right to self-
determination” and “the political, economic, spiritual, and cultural rebirth
of the Crimean Tatar people is possible only in their sovereign national state”
(Allworth, 1998, 353). Later, this wish obtained more concrete form – the
Crimean Tatar national territorial autonomy within the Ukrainian state
(Shevel 2000, 11). An important place in the politics of Mejlis was occupied
by the discourse of deportation (surgun) – the collective trauma of the
Crimean Tatars, to commemoration of which was devoted many activities
and initiatives. For a long time (since the establishment of the Mejlis in 1991
until 2013), the chairman of the Mejlis was a former Soviet dissident Mustafa
Dzhemilev, whose personality largely predetermined an ideological orientation
of the Mejlis, particularly its rejection of the Soviet regime, nonviolent
methods of struggle, and support for democratic forces in Ukraine (Ozcelik
2015, 13-14). Despite the dominance of secular views, the leadership of the
Mejlis often appealed to Islam as an important component of the historical
and cultural tradition of the Crimean Tatars. At the same time, all ideologies
that proclaimed the primacy of religion over ethnicity were rejected by it as
alien and harmful to the Crimean Tatars, such as those that can lead to the
assimilation of the people, its dissolution among the world Muslim Ummah
(Vystuplenie ...2008).
e SAMC (or simply Muftiyat) was a centralized institution established in
1992 to regulate processes in the religious sphere of the Crimean Tatars’ life.
e Muftiyat was formed with the direct participation of the Mejlis, which
led to very close relations of two institutions in the coming years. ese
relationships were so close that some opponents of the SAMC often accused it
of being dependent on Mejlis, calling it, ‘the department of the Mejlis’ or the
‘pocket Muftiyat’ (Muratova 2016, 164). is dependency was particularly
evident from the active participation of the SAMC in the political initiatives
of the Mejlis, which resulted in a reduction of its legitimacy among those
Crimean Tatars who were in opposition to the Mejlis and also among those
Muslims who did not support nationalism at all. To create a complete picture
of the relationships between two institutions, we can add that the third mufti
of the SAMC, Emirali Ablaev, who has held this post since 1999, was also a
member of the Mejlis.
e main ideology of the SAMC, as the charter of this organization says,
was Islam, according to which the Muftiyat has to carry out its activities. An
important concept of the SAMC discourse was the concept of ‘traditional’ or
‘Crimean’ Islam, which was understood as Islam rooted in the Crimean Tatar

51
Elmira Muratova
The Transformation of the Crimean Tatars’ Institutions and Discourses After 2014
tradition (Muratova 2008, 67). is concept did not have much circulation in
Crimea in the early 1990s, when Muftiyat and Mejlis actively asked Muslim
countries and organizations for help in the revival of Islam, but began to
acquire a loud sound by the early 2000s. en, among the Crimean Tatars
appeared followers of various Islamic movements, some of whom critically
evaluated religious traditions of the Crimean Tatars and criticized them for
departing from Islam. In this situation, the SAMC with the support of the
Mejlis launched activities to combat ‘non-traditional’ Islamic groups, which at
that time were represented by the followers of Salasm, Hizb ut-Tahrir (HT),
Muslim Brotherhood, etc.1
In general, the secular discourse of the Mejlis was dominant among the
Crimean Tatars throughout the Ukrainian period of post-Soviet Crimea.
According to it, the Crimean Tatars are the indigenous people of Crimea,
formed on its territory during a long process of ethnogenesis, which involved
representatives of all peoples and groups that inhabited Crimea since ancient
times (Williams 2015, 144; Yapici 2018). e fact that some European people
(like the Greeks and Romans) took part in the ethnogenesis of the Crimean
Tatars, according to the leaders of the Mejlis, explains that Crimean Tatars
have a strong European identity and support for pro-European political forces
in Ukraine (Wilson 2017, 28). According to Wilson, the idea of European
identity also has its roots in the long history of the Crimean Tatar National
Movement’s appeals to international organizations. e Mejlis’ leaders often
stressed that Crimean Tatars are Muslims whose religion has never been the
fundamentalist or radical but, on the contrary, historically has been tolerant
toward non-Muslims (Vozgrin 2013, 336, 361). e Crimean Tatars are a
victim nation, which has repeatedly suered from the machinations of the
Russian/Soviet state. e collective memory of the Crimean Tatars contains
two main events that played an important role in the history of the people.
ese were the annexation of Crimea by the Russian Empire in 1783 and
the deportation of Crimean Tatars from Crimea in 1944. Particularly, the
deportation became a ‘chosen trauma,’ an important source of the ethnic group
identity creation and maintenance (Ozcelik 2015, 15). roughout the whole
post-Soviet period of Crimea, victimization narratives, strongly encouraged
by the Mejlis, contributed to the political mobilization of the Crimean Tatars.
e xation on the oppressor (Russia/Soviet regime) has become one of the
1 During these years, Qurultay in Crimea adopted several resolutions condemning nontraditional
Islamic groups and calling for the preservation of spiritual unity. See, for example, “Postanovlenie
Kurultaya krymskotatarskogo naroda ‘O zadachakh organov natsional’nogo samoupravleniya po
ukrepleniyu dukhovnogo edinstva krymskotatarskogo naroda’ [Resolution of the Qurultay of the
Crimean Tatar people ‘On the tasks of national self-government bodies to strengthen the spiritual
unity of the Crimean Tatar people’],” December 2009.

52
Journal of Nationalism, Memory & Language Politics 13(1)
primary motivation factors for their active political involvement (Nikolko
2018, 82).
e dissemination of the main messages of the Mejlis discourse was ensured
through a set of events dedicated to the memorable dates of the Crimean
Tatar history, the activities of the Crimean Tatar media, and the creation of
a wide arsenal of aesthetic and cognitive means (monuments, works of art,
autobiographical, and other works, as well as paintings and images, historical
archives, books, and documentary and drama lms) that contributed to the
formation of the cultural memory of people.
e discourse of the SAMC contained the same messages of the secular
discourse and simply added religious nuances in explanation of certain
themes, for example the rst annexation and deportation. If secular discourse
among the reasons pointed exclusively to political factors – the decline of the
Ottoman Empire, Russia’s expansionist policy, dislike of the Crimean Tatars,
etc. – the religious discourse reminded the Crimean Tatars of the root cause
of all their troubles – their indierence toward their religion. It was because of
the departure of the Crimean Tatars from Islam that God turned them into
a victim of the neighboring (indel) state (Kouts and Muratova 2014, 30-31).
is particular interpretation of the reasons of the annexation and deportation
was given by imams of Crimean mosques on the eve of deportation each year.
The Fate of the Mejlis and Muftiyat After 2014
In spring 2014, Crimea has been de facto transferred from Ukrainian state
to a Russian country “with an authoritarian overcentralized government,
fake multi-party system, the massive state-sponsored propaganda campaigns,
eective repressive machinery and no such luxuries as freedom of speech,
fair and transparent elections or independent judiciary” (Osipov 2014, 9-10).
From the beginning, experts foresaw the risks of pressure, intimidation, and
persecutions an independent Crimean Tatar movement can face in Russia
(Osipov 2014, 10).
e annexation of Crimea radically changed the balance of power within the
Crimean Tatar people. A crucial step for this was Russia’s ban of the Mejlis
as an ‘extremist’ organization. is decision was not taken immediately after
the annexation. Initially, the new authorities of Crimea tried to establish
cooperation with the Mejlis: in March–April 2014, there were negotiations on
the distribution of seats in the high-ranking positions of the Crimean Republic
with regard of the Crimean Tatar representation in them. However, these
negotiations reached an impasse by the summer of 2014 when it became clear
that the regime does not allow engagement but requires complete submission

53
Elmira Muratova
The Transformation of the Crimean Tatars’ Institutions and Discourses After 2014
(Aydin 2014, 90), and soon after that, the relationships between authorities
and the Mejlis turned into a conict and decisions on deportation and ban
on entry to Crimea to Mustafa Dzhemilev, Refat Chubarov (chairman
of the Mejlis since 2013), and a number of other Mejlis activists followed.
Only after the plan to subordinate the Mejlis by replacing its leadership by
loyal Crimean Tatars failed (Wilson 2017, 39), in 2016, the Supreme Court
of Crimea recognized the Mejlis as an extremist organization and banned
its activity in the Russian Federation (Yapici 2018, 318; Nikolko 2018, 88).
e inability to control the Mejlis, the pro-Western orientation of its leaders,
combined with their ability of mass political mobilization of the Crimean
Tatars predetermined the desire of the Russian authorities to get rid of the
organization that could interfere with their policy toward the Crimean Tatars.
Nowadays, the Mejlis continues to operate in Kyiv, where its leaders and some
members of the organization live, but it can no longer have a real impact
on the situation in Crimea. ose members of the Mejlis, who remained
in Crimea, are trying to maintain connections between regional and local
branches but can no longer hold any public actions.
To ll out the vacuum created by the expulsion of the Mejlis, the Russian
authorities attempted to create several loyal Crimean Tatar organizations that
could contribute to the formation of Russian civil identity among the Crimean
Tatars (Yapici 2018, 319). ese initiatives involved both former Mejlis
functionaries and those who were in opposition to it. ere were organizations
‘Crimea’ (Kyrym) headed by the former deputy chairman of the Mejlis and
now the deputy chairman of the Crimean parliament Remzi Ilyasov and ‘Our
Crimea’ (Bizim Kyrym) headed by the former head of the Genichesk district
administration in southern Ukraine Seytumer Nimetullayev. However, all
their attempts to get mass support of the Crimean Tatars and to convince
them for more active involvement in civic life of the Russian Crimea (for
example, to participate in parliamentary and presidential elections) ended
in nothing and both organizations exist in many respects formally (Wilson
2017, 39).
e fate of the SAMC, in contrast to the Mejlis, turned out dierently.
Initially (during the summer-autumn 2014), this institution had experienced
serious pressure from the new authorities, which took place in dierent
forms (Muratova 2016, 166). ere were searches in mosques, withdrawal of
forbidden in Russia religious literature, and checks of madrasas by various
agencies (Dollenberg 2014). ere was also the creation of another centralized
Muslim structure – the Taurida Muftiyat (Tavricheskiy Muftiyat) – in 2014,
which from the very beginning declared its pro-Russian position and a desire

54
Journal of Nationalism, Memory & Language Politics 13(1)
to become the main Muslim organization in the Russian Crimea (Novyi
Tavricheskiy...2014). ere were also quite frequent visits to Crimea by
delegations of Muslim organizations of Russia, who told the Crimean mufti
about the prospects for Muslims in Russia and the benets of cooperation with
the Russian authorities (Dzhabrail 2014). All these eventually led the SAMC
to the idea of the need for cooperation with the new government as the only
way to preserve its status as a centralized Muslim body and control over the
mosques and madrasas in the peninsula. As a result, against the background
of the authorities’ pressure on the Mejlis and its squeezing out of the public
space of Crimea, the SAMC did not lose its position and even strengthened
it. All mosques and madrasas operating in Crimea were transferred under
the direct jurisdiction of the Muftiyat (Vse mecheti Kryma...2018). e
mufti and his deputies became mandatory guests at all public events held by
the authorities in Crimea (Muratova 2016, 169). Furthermore, the Russian
authorities have launched a process of building a huge Cathedral mosque in
Simferopol, which is presented as a clear illustration of the positive changes
in the life of the Crimean Muslims. Financial support of the SAMC through
various near-state institutions was established, and this allowed increasing its
sta, publishing religious literature, and conducting scientic and educational
activities.
Such a ‘rise’ of the Muftiyat naturally aected its relationships with the Mejlis.
With the stronger inclusion of the SAMC into the orbit of Russian inuence,
these relations started to deteriorate. e Muftiyat was used by the Russian
authorities to criticize the Mejlis and undermine its inuence among the
Crimean Tatars. Pushed by the authorities, the SAMC initiated several public
events, where statements with severest critics of the Mejlis leaders’ initiatives
were made.2 All these have contributed to that relationship between former
allies developed into an open conict, accompanied by mutual accusations and
personal insults. e Mejlis accused the leaders of the SAMC for collaboration,
corruption, and betrayal of the interests of the people (Dzhemilev...2016). In
its turn, the Muftiyat retorted that unlike the leaders of the Mejlis, it remains
with its people in their homeland and continues to work for their benet (Kto
podstavlyaet...2016). e tough rhetoric against the leaders of the Mejlis,
which was previously unusual for the SAMC, aected its legitimacy, pushing
away a signicant number of the Crimean Tatars who did not have pro-
2 Particularly, statements were criticizing the food and energy blockades of Crimea and the formation
of the Crimean Tatar battalion within the Ukrainian armed forces ghting in the Donbas area (Wil-
son 2017: 30).

55
Elmira Muratova
The Transformation of the Crimean Tatars’ Institutions and Discourses After 2014
Russian sentiments.3 e formation with the support of the Mejlis of a parallel
SAMC in Kyiv in November 2016 has contributed to the weakening of the
position of the Crimean Muftiyat abroad (V Kieve sozdano...2016).4 us,
today two institutions claim to be spiritual centers of Crimean Muslims: one
recognized by some post-Soviet Muslim communities in Crimea and another
recognized by the wider Muslim and international community in Kyiv.
As a result of institutional changes and especially Mejlis’ dismissal from the
political stage, the Crimean Tatars narratives in media lost their civic and
political ‘colors.’ Now the community is represented in the Crimean media
mainly by religious leaders and is thus positioned as a Muslim community,
not much as an indigenous group or a politically motivated group. e
dramatic transformation has also aected the narratives of memories
and remembering practices of deportation. e new authorities returned
to the 1994 interpretation of the event, when May 18 was set as a day of
commemoration of the deportation’s victims without any particular ethnic
connotation. e Soviet discourse of ignorance of the trauma of a particular
indigenous ethnic group was revitalized once again (Nikolko 2018, 89).
The Phenomenon of ‘Crimean solidarity’
e real and imagined threats to societal security, understood as “ability of a
society to persist under changing conditions and possible and actual threats”
(Waever 1993, 23), manifested in deportations of the Mejlis leaders, deliberate
interments, criminal prosecution, and murders of the participants of the
pro-Ukraine demonstrations (Žídková and Melichar 2015, 101-102), forced
the Crimean Tatar community to reconsider its previous views and goals.
e change in the balance of power within the Crimean Tatar people after
2014 was accompanied not only by a change in inuence and positions of
the main players but also by the transformation of previous coalitions and
discourses. e former dividing line between supporters of the Mejlis and
the SAMC, as promoters of the Crimean Tatar identity, on the one hand,
and various Islamic groups, who advocated for universal Islamic identity, on
the other hand, has disappeared. New coalitions of organizations and groups
with new discourses have emerged. In this regard, an interesting phenomenon
is ‘Crimean solidarity,’ an organization whose appearance before Crimea’s
annexation was unthinkable.
3 It was evident from the focus group and individual interviews of the study “e values and needs of
the Crimean Tatars” conducted in 2017–2019 in Crimea. e study was conducted by the author of
the paper together with Alime Apselyamova and Lenora Dyulber.
4 e mufti of the SA MC in Kyiv became Ayder Rustamov who from 2015 headed the Committee of
Spiritual Values of Muslims in the community of Crimean Tatars in Kyiv.

56
Journal of Nationalism, Memory & Language Politics 13(1)
As an independent organization, ‘Crimean solidarity’ appeared in April
2016 on the basis of the Crimean contact group (Krymskaya kontaktnaya
gruppa) formed by the member of the Crimean Tatar National Movement5
(Krymskotatarskoe natsional’noe dvidzenie) Abdureshit Dzhepparov at the end
of 2015. is group appeared as a reaction to the facts of the kidnapping
of the Crimean Tatars, which began to take place in the annexed Crimea
(Shakirov 2014). e task of the contact group was to coordinate the eorts of
the families of the victims, law enforcement agencies, as well as the Crimean
authorities in the search for missing people. Initially, the group was able to
conduct a dialog with the authorities (Kontaktnaya gruppa...2014), but in
2016, when the searches and arrests of Crimean Tatars took massive forms,
the authorities stopped all contacts with the group. As a result, it went through
reorganization and reorientation and made an emphasis on human rights and
charity initiatives.
When the Crimean contact group has been transformed into the ‘Crimean
solidarity,’ it united families of more than 20 arrested and detained Crimean
Tatars, their lawyers, members of the Crimean Tatar National Movement,
the Mejlis, journalists, public activists, and other sympathizers. All these
people, who previously belonged to dierent organizations and had dierent
(sometimes opposed) positions and views, became united by the rejection of
the Russian policy of pressure on the Crimean Tatars and, in general, the
Russian status of Crimea.
e ‘Crimean solidarity’ is structured horizontally and consists of several
groups of people responsible for a particular type of activity. ese groups
operate voluntarily and are coordinated by a person who is ocially called the
coordinator. In 2016–2018, Server Mustafaev held this position until he was
arrested. Currently, the duties of the coordinator are performed by Dilyaver
Memetov.6 ere is no xed membership in the organization. Anyone can
join or leave it at any time. e core of those responsible for a particular type
of activity is not permanent due to the constant detentions and arrests of the
most active members of the organization.7
e peculiarity of the ‘Crimean solidarity’ is dominance in its ranks with
people with a strong Islamic identity, who until 2014 was on the other side
of the Mejlis and SAMC coalition. A signicant part of the leadership of
5 e Crimean Tatar National Movement for the return to Crimea has been established in the 1960s in
the places of the Crimean Tatars’ exile in Central Asia.
6 Dilyaver Memetov is the son of one of the arrested Crimean Tatars, Remzi Memetov, who in Decem-
ber 2018 was sentenced to 17 years.
7 For example, on March 27, 2019, there were arrests of 27 people in the city of Simferopol and Sim-
feropol district, many of whom were active members of the ‘Crimean solidarity’ (V Krymu…2019).

57
Elmira Muratova
The Transformation of the Crimean Tatars’ Institutions and Discourses After 2014
the ‘Crimean solidarity’ is the Crimean Tatars previously associated with
the Islamic Party of Liberation (HT), which describes its ideology as Islam
and its aim as the re-establishment of the Islamic Caliphate to resume the
Islamic way of life in the Muslim world. e party rejects Western political
ideas, such as liberalism, nationalism, and democracy, but, in contrast to
other Islamic groups, advocates nonviolent methods of struggle (Muratova
2014, 11). In Crimea, HT started to operate openly in the 1990s and held
many conferences, rallies, and protests and published the newspaper ‘Revival’
(Vozrojdenie). Its activity was of great concern to the SAMC and the Mejlis,
whose leaders constantly criticized it for being alien to the Crimean Tatar
traditions (Bogomolov et al. 2006, 60-62). Unlike the other post-Soviet
countries, the party was not (and still not) banned in Ukraine,8 and the
Crimean oce of HT for many years had functioned as a coordinating center
of this party in the whole post-Soviet area.
With the arrival of Russia in Crimea, where HT is considered as an extremist
organization, party members began to be subjected to pressure. According to
the Crimean Human Rights Group, as of April 2019, 55 people were arrested
(V ramkakh...2019). Some of them had already received prison sentences,
while others were still under investigation. e very detention of these people
was accompanied by large-scale special operations of the Russian Center
for combating extremism (the so-called ‘Center E’), which were carried out
early in the morning with cordon o streets and involvement of several dozen
armed men. As a rule, detentions were preceded by searches in the houses
of these people, during which security forces seized phones, computers, and
other equipment. e families of detained and arrested representatives of the
HT later formed the core of the ‘Crimean solidarity’.
Bringing together dierent people with dierent backgrounds within the
‘Crimean solidarity’ became possible only after the annexation, when former
opponents came closer to each other under the pressure of a common threat
– the repression of the Russian state. e Mejlis helped ‘Crimean solidarity’
to gain legitimacy beyond the Crimea, helping its activists to get access to
Ukrainian and international human rights institutions. ‘Crimean solidarity’,
in its turn, provides human resources (based on the members of HT) to
accomplish certain public initiatives in Crimea that the Mejlis is not able
to organize anymore. For example, the activists of the ‘Crimean solidarity’
ensure the presence of supporting people during searches and arrests, where
they video what is happening and make these events public; they also hold
8 Although in 2009, there was an attempt by the head of the Crimean branch of the Ministry of Inter-
nal Aairs of Ukraine general Moskal to ban it (Moskal trebuet…2009).

58
Journal of Nationalism, Memory & Language Politics 13(1)
protest actions all over Crimea, for example, single pickets in October 2017
(Nikiforov 2017).
Finding such dierent people within the ‘Crimean solidarity’ inevitably led
to the transformation of their discourses. First, activists of the organization
do not publicly associate themselves with HT, which is understandable, given
its status in the Russian Federation. Besides, they seek to get away from
exclusively Islamic rhetoric, which previously dominated among them and
was causing acute irritation among the Mejlis and secular-oriented circles of
the Crimean Tatar society (see Bogomolov et al. 2006, 62-63). No statements
about the perniciousness of Western inuence, failure of democracy, or
rejection of nationalism are longer heard. ese topics disappeared from the
rhetoric of HT members also because its representatives began to speak at
dierent Western human rights platforms, where it would be strange to voice
such ideas.9
Second, it is interesting how ‘Crimean solidarity’ activists position victims of
the Russian regime. Concepts such as ‘Muslims of Crimea,’ ‘Crimean Tatars,’
and ‘Crimean Tatar people’ are used as synonyms.
e oensive on active people is getting stronger every day. It will go
as long as we have the spirit of collectivism, general assistance, and the
spirit of the fact that we are Crimean Tatars, the Muslims in Crimea
want to help each other and do not leave each other in trouble. When
we constantly come to searches, we give support to families who are left
without breadwinners, sons, and fathers. As long as they do not destroy
it, the pressure on our people will continue.10
Moreover, activists readily supported the initiative of the Mejlis to name all
the detained, kidnapped, or arrested after the annexation of Crimea people as
‘political victims’ of the regime or ‘prisoners of the Kremlin’.
ird, the ‘Crimean solidarity’ activists began to use the same victimization
narratives developed by the Mejlis. In particular, at the monthly held public
meetings of the organization, people discuss current Russia’s pressure on the
Crimean Tatars as another episode in the long history of their suering at
the hands of Russia/USSR. e same events of ethnic history as the rst
annexation of Crimea and deportation are remembered.
Our people has suered many trials and diculties. But the worst
was the deportation. e enemies began to take measures to destroy
our people more than 200years ago. During the annexation of 1783,
9 One of the most famous activists of the ‘Crimean solidarity’ lawyer Emil Kurtbedinov has even re-
ceived in 2017 the international human rights award «Front Line Defenders» (Koshelev 2017).
10 e speech of public defender Mustafa Seidaliev at the monthly meeting of the ‘Crimean solidarity’
on April 28, 2019.

59
Elmira Muratova
The Transformation of the Crimean Tatars’ Institutions and Discourses After 2014
thousands of people were killed. Hundreds of thousands were forced
to leave their homes to save lives. In 1944, having labeled our people
the traitors, they loaded it into wagons and deported them. Our
grandfathers hoped that this would not happen to our people again.
But today, having hung a new label of terrorists, having replaced animal
wagons with auto-servants, our people continue to be deported, only
now to Russian prisons.11
Fourth, the red line in the rhetoric of the activists is the idea that nowadays
persecution is not the persecution of supporters of one particular group
(namely HT) but the persecution directed against the entire Crimean Tatar
people. ey try to convince people outside their group that sooner or later
representatives of other groups and organizations within the Crimean Tatar
society could also nd themselves as victims, because the regime is anti-
Crimean Tatar in its nature. For this reason, ‘Crimean solidarity’ activists
believe that it is shortsighted to amuse themselves with the idea that you can
stay away. Instead, everyone, according to them, needs to show active support
to those who are being persecuted at the moment.
ere is a system, and for this system, raw materials are needed ...
Today, some people fall into the millstones of this system. ere is no
need to harbor illusions - tomorrow others will fall ... We cannot stop
this system ... But each of us can provide support. Come and visit the
family of the victim, do not say that they deserved it ... When we say
that strength is in unity, this is not some kind of philosophical notion
or abstract thing. e unity lies in the fact that you, despite some
disagreements or dierent positions on some issues, unite around a
common threat and make eorts to counter it.12
e activists of ‘Crimean solidarity’ stress that their organization is not an
organization of a particular group but a platform for everyone in Crimea
willing to peacefully resist the regime.
Crimean solidarity is not a localized union. is is a people platform.
is is the Crimean Tatar people. ese are the Crimean Tatars and
all those who joined the peaceful resistance in the Crimea.13
Not only the discourse of the ‘Crimean solidarity’ has mixed, hybrid
composition but the activity too. It goes in line with the general course of the
Crimean Tatars’ struggle developed back to the 1960s based on nonviolent
11 e speech of the public defender Server Cholakchik at the monthly meeting of ‘Crimean solidarity’
on March 31, 2019.
12 e speech of the lawyer Nazim Sheikhmambetov at the monthly meeting of ‘Crimean solidarity’
on April 28, 2019.
13 e speech of the coordinator of the project ‘Crimean childhood’ Mumine Salieva at the monthly
meeting of ‘Crimean solidarity” on March 31, 2019.

60
Journal of Nationalism, Memory & Language Politics 13(1)
resistance and also contemporary security considerations (see Žídková and
Melichar 2015, 105). Human rights protection is an important part of it.
e organization has a quite big group of lawyers, consisting of those who
lived in the Crimea before annexation and managed to obtain Russian legal
certicates after it and those who came to Crimea from Russia particularly
to defend victims of Russian persecution. e last are people with dierent
ethnic and religious backgrounds. All of them handle cases of detained and
arrested Crimean Tatars, represent them in courts, le appeals, etc.
Another activity of the organization is civil journalism. Its representatives
are constantly present at searches and arrests of the Crimean Tatars. A rapid
warning system based on social media involvement has been developed and
allows them to quickly arrive at the scene. From there, they conduct online
reports and post them on social media. ese reports have become the main
source of information about the ongoing repressions in Crimea, as the local
media either ignore this information totally or present it from security services
ocial stance.
Charity is another important part of the ‘Crimean solidarity’ activities.
It involves the provision of material assistance to detained and arrested
people and their family members. For example, the activists initiated several
fundraising projects intending to help prisoners to pay their nes. In the
framework of the charitable activities, there is a project ‘Our children’ (Bizim
balalar) that aimed to provide nancial help to children whose fathers were
imprisoned. It was initiated by well-known representatives of the Crimean
Tatar media Lilya Budzhurova and Elzara Islyamova. Various educational and
recreational activities are also organized for the children within this project.
Another children’s initiative is ‘Crimean childhood’ (Krymskoe detstvo), which
is primarily directed at the religious education of children. According to its
coordinator Mumine Salieva, there were already 180 children whose fathers
were imprisoned at the end of April 2019.
Finally, psychological support for families of the victims is another part of the
‘Crimean solidarity’ work. e monthly meetings of this organization have an
important therapeutic function, when mothers, wives, and sisters of detainees
have the opportunity to exchange information, to say about the situation of
their loved ones, and sometimes to read their letters, appeals, and even poems
written in prison.
Concluding Remarks
e appearance of ‘Crimean solidarity’ took place in the period of crisis caused
by the Russian annexation of Crimea when the Crimean Tatar community

61
Elmira Muratova
The Transformation of the Crimean Tatars’ Institutions and Discourses After 2014
was trying to get used to new, mainly perceived as hostile, reality. It was a
time when traditional institutions (Mejlis, Muftiate, etc.) were not able to
provide solutions to broad social problems and address challenges introduced
by the new political and institutional environment. In this situation of
uncertainty and growing pressure from the new authorities of Crimea, a new
organization with hybrid composition and ideology came into play. During
several years of its operation in Crimea, the ‘Crimean solidarity’ showed a
better ability to adapt to the turbulent environment than the two original
(pure) organizational forms from which it originates – the Islamic Party of
Liberation and the Mejlis (genetically grown from the Crimean Tatar National
Movement). e essential combination of their organizational principles
proved to be advantageous and allowed ‘Crimean solidarity’ to react more
exible and without being tied to one specic logic of action.
e hybridity of the ‘Crimean solidarity’ can be found at organizational,
ideological, and operational levels. At the level of organization, it follows the
logic of action of the HT with its close relationship between the members
based on Islamic brotherhood, mutual aid, and reciprocity. is helps the
organization’s members to continue their activities in the face of ever-increasing
pressure. Activities in the name of aected brothers and sisters give them
greater dedication and motivation. At the same time, the ‘Crimean solidarity’
inherited the nonviolent form of resistance developed back to the 1960s by the
Crimean Tatar National Movement and later used by the Mejlis. Participation
in the organization of people of dierent age categories – mainly young and
middle aged from the HT and older people from the National Movement –
creates a feeling of unity, erasing age and organizational boundaries, as well as
representation of the whole Crimean Tatar people.
At the ideological level of ‘Crimean solidarity,’ there is also a mixture of various
ideas, concepts, and narratives. e presence of Islam in the organization’s
activities is very noticeable both in the appearance of its activists (beards
for men, scarves on women’s heads) and the way they perform activities
(separation of men and women during monthly meetings, reading Muslim
prayers there). Although religious motifs are still very sound in the rhetoric
of members of this organization, it also incorporates important topics from
the secular discourse of the Mejlis, particularly, deportation and victimization
narratives. is is intended to reduce the dividing line between the secular
and religious parts of the Crimean Tatar people, to attract as many people
as possible to the activities of the organization and to enlist its support. e
usage of the secular discourse of the Mejlis is also done to level out the ocial
discourse of the authorities that only members of the HT are persecuted in

62
Journal of Nationalism, Memory & Language Politics 13(1)
Crimea. e activists of the organization seek to position the aected people
as political victims of the regime and the repressions themselves as repressions
against the entire Crimean Tatar people.
At the operational level, this hybrid organization with a strong religious
background is coping with a set of activities that previously were done mainly
by secular institutions. ese include human rights, journalism, charity,
and other activities. e emphasis on human rights activities suggests that
the current generation of the Crimean Tatars has adopted the strategy of
resistance of generations of the Soviet period. e ‘Crimean solidarity’ seeks
to build ties with both Russian and international human rights organizations.
In a situation of limited political opportunities, many Crimean Tatar activists
previously involved in the system of the Mejlis and public organizations saw
opportunities for their self-realization in human rights activism. ey are also
pushed toward this by the general atmosphere of insecurity in Crimea, when
the persecution of individual members of the Crimean Tatar community is
perceived by many as persecution on ethnic grounds. us, human rights
activism becomes the predominant model of ethnic consolidation in Crimea.
Using existing typologies in the third-sector studies, it is possible to name the
‘Crimean solidarity’ as the ‘shallow hybrid’ (Billis 2010, 59), which means
that by now it is an organization in which the process of hybridization is low
but is constantly moving to the ‘entrenched’ hybrid with a more profound
level of hybridization. is is also consonant with what Skelcher and Smith
called ‘assimilated hybrid,’ an organization in which the core or original logic
remains but adopts some of the practices and symbols of a new logic (Skelcher
and Smith 2015, 441-442). is means that ‘Crimean solidarity’ keeps the
original logic of HT’s institution development but adopts some practices and
narratives of the Mejlis and the Crimean Tatar National Movement. e
‘Crimean solidarity’ can also be regarded as ‘organic hybrid’ (Billis 2010, 61),
an organization that was born as a pure type (in the form of Islamic party) but
is moving slowly toward a more hybrid organizational form.
Certainly, the phenomenon of ‘Crimean solidarity’ shows the blurring
of lines between secular and religious, ethnic and Islamic in the Crimean
Tatar society. It particularly shows how people with dierent backgrounds
and agendas leave their dierences aside to support each other in the face of
real and imagined threats to societal security. Of course, this seemingly ideal
situation has many nuances that need to be further studied and explained.
At this stage, it is dicult to say what lies ahead of this hybrid organization:
whether it will become a strong organization, following the example of
which other ethnic organizations of the Crimean Tatars will be created, or

63
Elmira Muratova
The Transformation of the Crimean Tatars’ Institutions and Discourses After 2014
dierences between activists with a dierent understanding of the future of
the Crimean Tatars will prove to be so signicant that the hybrid will become
ineective. e literature on hybridity shows that hybridization may lead to
the loss of the organization’s ideology and general orientation, and hybrids
can experience intraorganizational tensions that can be of dierent nature
and bring up various consequences. Much depends on environmental change
and on the ability of leaders to have a strategic vision for the future.
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