Crimean Tatars (), or simply Crimeans (), are a Turkic ethnic group and nation native to Crimea. Their ethnogenesis lasted hundreds of years in Crimea and the northern regions along the coast of the Black Sea, uniting Mediterranean populations with those of the Eurasian Steppe.Агджоян А. Т., Схаляхо Р. А., Утевская О. М., Жабагин М. К., Тагирли Ш. Г., Дамба Л. Д., Атраментова Л. А., Балановский О. П. Генофонд крымских татар в сравнении с тюркоязычными народами Европы , 2015Comas, D., Plaza, S., Wells, R. et al. Admixture, migrations, and dispersals in Central Asia: evidence from maternal DNA lineages. Eur J Hum Genet 12, 495–504 (2004). https://doi.org/10.1038/sj.ejhg.5201160
Until the 20th century, Crimean Tatars were the most populous demographic cohort in Crimea, constituting the majority of the peninsula's population as a whole. Following the Russian Empire's annexation of the Crimean Khanate in 1783, they were subjected to attempts at driving them from the region through a combination of physical violence and harassment, forced resettlement, and legalized forms of discrimination. By 1800, between 100,000 and 300,000 Crimean Tatars had left Crimea.
While Crimean Tatar cultural elements were not completely eradicated under the Romanov dynasty, the populace was almost completely eradicated from the peninsula under the Soviet Union, especially during the Stalinist era. In May 1944, almost immediately after the Soviets retook German-occupied Crimea during World War II, the country's State Defense Committee ordered the deportation of all Crimean Tatars, including the families of Crimean Tatar soldiers in the Red Army. The deportees were transported in trains and boxcars to Central Asia, where they were primarily resettled in Uzbekistan. Anywhere from 18% to 46% of the Crimean Tatar population was lost due to the Soviet deportation campaigns. From 1967 onwards, only a few of the displaced Crimean Tatars were allowed to return, although de-Stalinization had led to the Soviet government's recognition of the deportations as ethnic cleansing and cultural genocide. Later, in 1989, the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union adopted new policies for the full right of return of the Crimean Tatars, sparking a steady increase in the population.
Since the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, the Crimean Tatars have been members of the Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organization. The European Union and international indigenous groups do not dispute their status as an indigenous people and they have been officially recognized as an indigenous people of Ukraine since 2014.Verkhovna Rada recognized Crimean Tatars indigenous people of Ukraine (Рада визнала кримських татар корінним народом у складі України) . Mirror Weekly. 20 March 2014 However, the Russian administration in occupied Crimea considers them a "national minority" instead of an indigenous people, and continues to deny that they are the peninsula's titular nation, in spite of the fact that the Soviet administration considered them indigenous before their deportation. Today, Crimean Tatars constitute approximately 15% of the Crimean population.In the 2014 census, many of those who indicated the nationality "Tatar" in the census were actually Crimean Tatars. Beyond the peninsula, significant populations of the Crimean Tatar diaspora exist in Turkey, Romania, and Bulgaria, among other countries.
Language
The Crimean Tatar language is a member of Kipchak languages of the Turkic language family. It has three dialects and the standard language is written in the central dialect. Crimean Tatar has a unique position among the Turkic languages because its three "dialects" belong to three different (sub)groups of Turkic. This makes the classification of Crimean Tatar as a whole difficult.
UNESCO ranked Crimean Tatar as one of the most endangered languages that are under serious threat of extinction (severely endangered) in 2010. However, according to the Institute of Oriental Studies, due to negative situations, the real degree of threat has elevated to critically endangered languages in recent years, which are highly likely to face extinction in the coming generations.
Steppe, (çöl "desert", şimaliy "northern"): Steppe dialect is spoken by the majority of diaspora Crimean Tatars in Romania, Bulgaria, Turkey and others. It belongs to Bulgar subgrouping of the Kipchak family and Nogai, another Kipchak language, has influenced it. It is related to Kazakh, Karakalpak, and Nogai proper. This dialect was spoken by former nomadic inhabitants of the Crimean steppes. It has roots in Cumania and later the Golden Horde. It was influenced by the Middle Mongol spoken in the Golden Horde and notable Slavic influences occurred during the Imperial Russian invasion in 1783. Bağçasaray (orta yolaq "middle region"): Standard Crimean Tatar is classified as a language of the Cuman subgroup of Kipchak and the closest relatives are Mishar dialects of Tatar, Karachay-Balkar, and Kumyk. Bağçasaray is spoken in Crimea by sedentary Tatars as the standard language because its speakers comprise a relative majority of Crimean Tatar speakers in Crimea. The middle dialect, although it is a Kipchak language, has strong Turkish, Ukrainian, Mariupol Greek (especially Urum language) elements. Yalıboyu (cenübiy "Southern"): The Yalıboyu, Tat-Tarter, or Coastal Tatar language is an Oghuz language descended from Ottoman Turkish.Brian Glyn Williams (2001) "The Crimean Tatars: The Diaspora Experience and the Forging of a Nation", It arrived in Crimea through the Ottoman Empire's conquest of the Principality of Theodoro in 1475. Following the Turkish occupation, Southern Crimea came under direct Ottoman Turkish rule, while the Crimean Khanate in northern regions was vassalized.
Sub-ethnic groups
The Crimean Tatars are most often subdivided into three core sub-ethnic groups:
The Mountain Tats (not to be confused with the Iranic Tat people, living in the Caucasus region) who used to inhabit the mountainous Crimea before 1944. The Yaliboylus, descendants of Ottoman Turkish settlers from Anatolia who settled in the rural villages of the Kefe Eyalet of the Ottoman Empire, which had been severely depopulated of its previously predominantly Orthodox Christian population, who, due to coastal attacks by cossacks hostile towards the lands of the Ottoman Empire, largely fled to the interior of the peninsula to the lands under the rule of the Crimean Khan. The Steppe Tatars — former inhabitants of the Crimean steppe.Crimean Tatars (КРИМСЬКІ ТАТАРИ) . Encyclopedia of History of Ukraine.
Outside the core groups, there are also three others which are closely related to Crimean Tatars and sometimes viewed as sub-ethnic groups:
There is a group self called Türkmen, who migrated once from Anatolia, known as "Tayfa/Dayfa", assimilated into the Crimean Tatar people, speak a Tatar dialect. The Urum. Some researchers consider the Urums to be a Turkic people—Christian Crimean Tatars who historically practiced Orthodoxy,Маріупольські греки , Велика російська енциклопедія, 2010 as they share identical customs and traditions and speak Crimean Tatar, while genetic studies show them to be significantly closer to Southern Coastal (d=0.16) and Mountain Crimean Tatars (d=0.2) than to Greeks (d=0.55) or even the neighboring Rumey Greeks (d=0.33), with even Steppe Crimean Tatars (d=0.45) being genetically nearer to them than mainland Greeks. Nevertheless, like Rumai, Urums tend to identify moreso culturally towards Greece,(Evidenced by institutions like Mariupol University teach Modern Greek) while also frequently identifying as Turks ethnically. In Turkey, they are usually classified as Kipchak Crimean Turks, while in Russia, they are usually classified as a group with origins in the Greek diaspora, a categorization challenged by Ukrainian historian V. I. Ivatsky, who argues the Rumey-Urum distinction is political (Greek vs. Turkic-speaking) rather than ethnic, positing that Rumey could denote any Orthodox Crimean resident, while Urums specifically infers descent from non-Greek Turkic-speaking Crimeans, in disagreement with "Tatarized Greeks" narrative being perpetuated through Greek and Cypriot consulate-sponsored initiatives in Mariupol (Modern Greek classes, media, and cultural events), all while the community underwent progressive Russification, which promoted a Hellenic identity through Russian education and imperial perceptions. For example, Russified Azov Greeks internalized this external image imposed upon them. The Lipka Tatars. Part of the Lipka Tatars, who came from the Crimean Khanate, are considered part of the Crimean Tatars. They played a significant role in the Crimean Tatar national movement during the First and Second World Wars (Maciej Sulkiewicz, Mustafa Edige Kirimal, Olgerd Krychynsky). Famous scientists and writers with a world name come from Lipka Tatars (Henryk Sienkiewicz, Ahatanhel Krymsky and Mykhailo Tugan-Baranovsky). Most of them do not know the Crimean Tatar language due to assimilation and speak Polish, Lithuanian, Belarusian and Ukrainian.
According to Lee (2023), the population of the Crimean Khanate consisted of both nomadic and sedentary groups. The nomadic Crimean Tatars of the northern steppe regions were described as resembling the Kazakhs and spoke a Kipchak Turkic language, while the sedentary populations of the coastal and mountainous regions descended from groups including Greeks, Goths, Armenians, Italians, Alans, and Anatolian Turks. Over time, these groups gradually merged and contributed to the formation of the modern Crimean Tatar people. Historians suggest that inhabitants of the mountainous parts of Crimea lying to the central and southern parts (the Tats), and those of the Southern coast of Crimea (the Yalıboyu) were the direct descendants of the Pontic Greeks, Scythians, Ostrogoths (Crimean Goths), and Kipchaks along with the Cumans while the latest inhabitants of the northern steppe represent the descendants of the Nogai Horde of the Black Sea, nominally subjects of the Crimean Khan.Khodarkovsky – Russia's Steppe Frontier p. 11 It is largely assumed that the Tatarization process that mostly took place in the 16th century brought a sense of cultural unity through the blending of the Greeks, Italians, Ottoman Turks of the southern coast, Goths of the central mountains and Turkic-speaking Kipchaks and Cumans of the steppe and forming of the Crimean Tatar ethnic group.Williams, BG. The Crimean Tatars: The Diaspora Experience and the Forging of a Nation. Pgs 7–23. However, the Cuman language is considered the direct ancestor of the current language of the Crimean Tatars with possible incorporations of the other languages, like Crimean Gothic.István Vásáry (2005) Cumans and Tatars, Cambridge University Press.Stearns(1979:39–40). The fact that Crimean Tatars' ethnogenesis took place in Crimea and consisted of several stages lasting thousands of years is proved by genetic research showing that the gene pool of the Crimean Tatars preserved both the initial components for thousands of years, and later in the northern steppe regions of the Crimea.Агджоян А. Т., Схаляхо Р. А., Утевская О. М., Жабагин М. К., Тагирли Ш. Г., Дамба Л. Д., Атраментова Л. А., Балановский О. П. Генофонд крымских татар в сравнении с тюркоязычными народами Европы , 2015