You're reading: Tatars carry on decades-long struggle to reclaim Crimean land taken away

The largely ignored issue of giving repatriated Tatars promised land in Crimea is festering to a boiling point.

Alie Vedutova, an ethnic Tatar, lives in a shack with no running water and electricity on the outskirts of Simferopol on Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula. Water tanks come once every three days.

“For electricity we bought a generator with neighbors,” said Vedutova, describing her way of life. Since her husband died, she shares a hut of 28 square meters with her mother, a paralyzed father, son, daughter, grandchild and daughter-in-law.

Seventy other neighbors – all Tatars – live in similar conditions, squatting illegally on plots of land. In Crimea, a total of 1,400 hectares of land are occupied by 15,000 Crimean Tatars who have failed to obtain parcels legally.

While high-ranking officials and well-connected individuals have no problem obtaining hectares of valuable land in Crimea, ethnic Tatars are becoming fed up with broken promises. Now Crimean authorities are promising to resolve the land conflicts in less than a month. But Tatars fear that officials may solve the problem by kicking them off the land – again.

It has happened before. Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin deported nearly 200,000 Crimean Tatars from Crimea in May 1944 to Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan for “desertion from the Soviet army” during World War II.

There are 61 areas in Crimea with some 15,000 people demanding this land.”

– Zevzhet Kurkumetov, head of the land commission of Mejlis.

They could not return to their homeland until the 1980s in the waning days of the Soviet empire. Then, tens of thousands returned, only to find their lands taken.

Vedutova’s parents returned in 1987. Their former house in the Belhorod district was occupied by another family. “We were promised that new apartments will be built for those coming back from deportation. But it was a lie,” Vedutova said bitterly.

Most Tatars found it impossible to buy land and an unofficial ban on selling houses to them was in place. That’s when the illegal land squatting started.

According to the Mejlis, an unofficial parliament of Crimean Tatars, the ethnic minority is demanding 3,000 hectares on the peninsula.

“There are 61 areas in Crimea with some 15,000 people demanding this land,” said Zevzhet Kurkumetov, head of the land commission of Mejlis.

Successions of presidents – Leonid Kuchma, Viktor Yushchenko and now Viktor Yanukovych – have promised action, but it hasn’t come.

The prime minister of the autonomous republic, Vasyl Dzharty, said Tatars do not face discrimination in obtaining land.

“The problem is there are many so-called ‘businessmen’ among squatters,” Dzharty said. “Acquisition became a business for them. They have seized numerous parcels and hope they will have them legalized now. That is not going to happen.”

As in the rest of the country, there is no land cadastre available to the general public, and the map of land of Crimea is probably the most secret document on the peninsula.”

– Ihor Semyvolos, head of the Association of Middle East Studies.

According to Dzharty, there is no crisis at all: All Tatars have been given parcels and are simply trying to get more for their children.

However, Tatars say more than 60 percent of them have never received any land and have no place to live. “In every village, they have lists of those deported and it is very easy to check who among them have received parcels and who have not,” Zevzhet Kurkumetov said.

“Tatars will give up their demands for 100 square meters of land only after the government will make oligarchs and high ranking officials give up their hectares of land in Crimea obtained illegally,” said deputy Mejlis head Refat Chubarov.

Like many things in Ukraine, who controls what land in Crimea is unclear.

“As in the rest of the country, there is no land cadastre available to the general public, and the map of land of Crimea is probably the most secret document on the peninsula,” said Ihor Semyvolos, head of the Association of Middle East Studies, who is researching the issue on the peninsula.

Ex-speaker of the Crimean Parliament, Anatoliy Grytsenko, was detained on Jan. 24 and accused of abuse of power by giving away 4,800 hectares of land illegally. Another criminal case was opened later involving land fraud with resort lands in Yalta. Previously, a criminal case was opened against the head of the state company Livadia, accused of giving away 20.5 hectares of land.

“Authorities simply cannot stand the thought of giving up those valuable parcels to Tatars for free while they could have been sold for huge money,” said the head of the Mejlis, Mustafa Dzhemilev.

Consequently, squatters such as Vedutova say they are threatened with summons, eviction and fines from police.

Some Tatars are trying to act lawfully, but without success. “In 2003 village council in Livadia gave 6 hectares of land to 50 Tatar families. However, later we found that the land was given to a Donetsk-based firm,” says Ibrahim Voyenny, head of Koidyshler Tatar organization. Since then Tatars issued numerous complaints, but to no avail.


The whole issue should have been resolved in the 1990s, when deported Tatars started to come back to Crimea.”

– Ihor Semyvolos, head of the Association of Middle East Studies.

Dzharty, the Crimean prime minister, promises the situation with Tatar land in Crimea will be resolved within a month with the findings of a special commission. Tatars remain skeptical.

“There have been numerous commissions over the last 20 years,” says Mejlis head Dzhemilev.

“The last one was in 2009. It produced recommendations to the government. But nothing happened,” Dzhemilev said. Meanwhile, authorities continue trying to persuade Tatars to spare the most valuable parcels of land, he added.

Experts say more delay in solving land issues could trigger unrest.

“The whole issue should have been resolved in the 1990s, when deported Tatars started to come back to Crimea. If not to resolve the problem now, the tension will only grow and that can spur anything –to violence – on the peninsula,” Ihor Semyvolos said.

Tatars like Vedutova say they will stay put.

“We have seized ownerless abandoned land,” she said. “We did not go to fight for our houses taken from our parents,” Vedutova said.

“But we have nowhere to go from this land now. So we will fight for this land until we win.”


Kyiv Post staff writer Svitlana Tuchynska can be reached at
[email protected].