Houses and Homelands: The Reterritorialization of Crimean Tatars

Abstract

Crimean Tatars found that after the fall of the Soviet Union, self-immolation made sense not as an act of political protest, but as a pragmatic strategy for repatriation. It was largely through the practice of seizing land (samozakhvat), and threatening self-immolation when the authorities tried to evict them that Crimean Tatars repatriated. However, the Crimean Tatars have not always been willing to make sacrifices to live on the peninsula. After annexation by Russia in 1783, and the Crimean Wars in the 1800s, the peninsula was hardly construed as a “homeland.” They left it on a scale unprecedented in Europe at the time. This chapter therefore focuses on their attachment to homeland and the way it manifest in the process of repatriation. Juxtaposing two radically different moments in Crimean Tatar history, the centrifugal moment of emigration to the Ottoman Empire and the centripetal moment of repatriation to Crimea, will clarify the structure of feeling that guided repatriation.