Dzhemilev Mustafa: biography of the leader of the Crimean Tatars

2024 Author: Henry Conors | [email protected]. Last modified: 2024-02-12 02:43

The geopolitical situation on our planet very often, if not always, remains tense. Disputes over influence and sales markets, over territory and population - sometimes diplomacy does not help, and such issues begin to be resolved with the help of weapons.

The hero of this article is the leader of the Crimean Tatars, Mustafa Dzhemilev, who, due to the situation in Ukraine, was almost at the epicenter of the events that took place in the spring of 2014 in Crimea.

Childhood

Mustafa Dzhemilev was born into a family of ardent nationalists and anti-Sovietists on November 13, 1943, at the height of the Great Patriotic War, in the small village of Bozkoy. The upbringing was religious, in accordance with the strict norms and traditions of the Tatars. Mother was named Mahfure, father - Abdulcemil. Mustafa Dzhemilev adopted from his parents love for his native land and dislike for the Soviet regime from an early age.

In May 1944, the Dzhemilev family was deported from the Crimea, as soon as the peninsula was liberated by Soviet troops from the Nazi invaders. The small town of Gulistan in Uzbekistan has become a new home for the Dzhemilev family.

Study and expulsion from college

After graduating from school in the city of Gulistan, Mustafa Dzhemilev has been working at an aircraft factory inTashkent as a turner. Then he changes his speci alty to a locksmith and an electrician.

In 1962, Mustafa Dzhemilev applied to the Tashkent Institute of Irrigation and Melioration of Agriculture and, having passed the entrance exams, entered. Three years later, he is expelled for writing an article about Turkic culture in the Crimea, where the leadership of the institute saw criticism of Soviet power and Turkic nationalism. Although, according to one version, Dzhemilev, being a student, began to attend the Union of Crimean Tatar Youth, and after the "conversations" with the rector, he was simply afraid of the consequences and stopped going to school. Was expelled for academic failure.

First Conclusion

The first time Mustafa landed in jail was in 1966. In May of this year, he was drafted into the army, and here again there are two versions: either he refused to serve in the Soviet army, or he simply ignored the summons and call to the military registration and enlistment office. For evading service, he was sentenced to 1.5 years in prison. He was released from custody in late autumn 1967. Returned to work after serving his prison sentence.

Human rights activist Mustafa Dzhemilev

In the late sixties, he became one of the leaders of the Initiative Group for the Protection of Human Rights in the USSR, which mainly consisted of dissidents, former or future political prisoners, and the Soviet intelligentsia. Then he was arrested for distributing documents that denigrated the Soviet system and the leadership of the USSR. In January 1970, in the city of Tashkent, where Mustafa Dzhemilev continued to live,a trial was held at which the verdict was pronounced: three years in prison.

Released early, started working as an engineer. Two years later, he was again taken into custody, this time for evading military training. While he was in prison, he conducted anti-Soviet agitation among the prisoners, for which a new criminal case was initiated. In protest, Mustafa Dzhemilev, whose biography from that moment begins to be full of transfers and stages, declares a hunger strike. He was forced to be fed through a tube, as the hunger strike lasted ten months.

In April 1976, the court of the city of Omsk sentenced Mustafa to two and a half years in prison. Incidentally, one more prominent human rights activist, Academician Sakharov, has memories of this trial. After his release (in December 1977) he continued to live in Tashkent.

In the late seventies, he was convicted again for violating the rules of supervision, this time sent deep into Siberia - to Yakutia. The court pronounced a verdict: four years in prison. While serving his sentence, he met his wife through letters. After a while, she came to him. They got married there, in Yakutia. The newlyweds spent four years of exile hand in hand and, returning from Siberia, left for the Crimea. True, a few days later, Mustafa and his wife were again taken out of the peninsula and sent to Uzbekistan, to their place of permanent residence.

In 1983 he was taken into custody for the fifth time in his life. They accused him of compiling and distributing documents that defame the Soviet government,and was also named among the provocateurs who were preparing riots in the Crimea. In Tashkent, he was sentenced to three years in prison. At the end of 1986, in the village of Uptar (Magadan Region), Mustafa was given a suspended sentence of three years in prison and released in the courtroom. Perestroika began, and they began to look at the anti-Soviet through their fingers. Mustafa Dzhemilev left for Tashkent, where he openly began to gather supporters to create an all-Union movement of Crimean Tatars.

In the spring of 1987, a meeting of the All-Union Initiative Groups of the Crimean Tatar National Movement was held in Tashkent, where Mustafa Dzhemilev was nominated as a member of the Central Initiative Group.

Return to Crimea

In 1989 a very important event happened for Dzhemilev - he returned to the Crimea. Together with his family, he settled in Bakhchisarai. In 1991, the first Kurultai was convened - the Congress of the Crimean Tatars, and at the same time the main executive body of the Kurultai was elected - the Mejlis of the Crimean Tatar people, which until 2013 was headed by Mustafa. He led an active debate with those leaders of the Crimean Tatars who were in opposition to Kyiv.

As you can see, upon returning to Crimea, Mustafa Dzhemilev is actively involved in the political and social activities of Crimea, and later of Ukraine as a whole.

Political activities

In the mid-nineties, Mustafa Dzhemilev began active political activity not only in the Crimea, but also throughout Ukraine. Having become close to the People's Rukh of Ukraine, he was elected from him toVerkhovna Rada of Ukraine in 1998. Four years later, he ran for the Our Ukraine bloc. In 2006, he also became a member of the Rada.

Mustafa at Rada meetings showed himself not only as an ardent Russophobe (which is quite understandable), but also as a supporter of the denial of the Armenian genocide. This term refers us to the beginning of the twentieth century, when Armenia was under the rule of the Turkish yoke. In 1915, the mass extermination of the Armenian population took place and historians are still arguing how to treat this fact - as a cleansing of the population or as a war of the Armenian people for independence, during which heavy losses were suffered. Mustafa is in favor of the second option.

He was the head of the Mejlis until the end of 2013, handed over his post to Refat Chubarov.

The beginning of the "Crimean crisis"

The leader of the Crimean Tatars, Mustafa Dzhemilev, spoke out very sharply against Russia's actions during the "Crimean crisis" in the spring of 2014. In March, he even said that if Russian troops enter the peninsula, they will get a second Chechnya. On the same days, he had a telephone conversation with Putin, which will be discussed in more detail below. Mustafa Dzhemilev's meeting with Vladimir Putin was planned, but did not take place.

Also in March 2014, Mustafa meets with NATO representatives, urging them to send peacekeeping troops to Crimea. After the refusal, he goes to Turkey, where he asks the Turkish government to block the Crimea from the sea. But even here he will be refused.

Dzhemileventry into the territory of Russia is prohibited, and since Crimea is also part of Russia, Mustafa will not appear there until 2019. In any case, with an official visit.

In August, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko had an idea to create an "autonomous republic of Crimea", giving part of the Kherson region under it, and transferring leadership there to Dzhemilev. In February, Mustafa called on Poroshenko to introduce a complete blockade of Crimea, interrupting the flow of water, electricity, and gas. It was also Mustafa who was one of the supporters of a complete economic blockade of the peninsula.

On January 21, the court of the city of Simferopol arrested Mustafa in absentia for undermining the foundations of state power and terrorism.

Family

Mustafa met his wife back in Yakutia when he was exiled there. Her name is Safinanr and she is the head of the League of Crimean Tatar Women.

The eldest son of Mustafa Dzhemilev is Eldar. The younger one is named Hyser and became famous for shooting his friend who works at his house. Khaiser was convicted and sentenced to imprisonment, although the defense insisted on recognizing Khaiser as insane and placing him in a psychiatric hospital. An interesting fact is that the son committed the crime already on the territory of Russia, where his father was forbidden to enter. In a conversation with Putin, Mustafa touched on this issue, to which the President of Russia promised to release Khaiser on the condition that everything was calm in Crimea and the Crimean Tatars, for whom Mustafa Dzhemilev is not even a leader, but a symbol, would not commit any provocative actions that could influence on the situation in Crimea. Recall thatthe conversation took place in the spring of 2014.

Mustafa's granddaughter hanged herself at the age of ten. The prosecutor's office establishes the reasons.

Conversation with the President

According to Mustafa, he talked with Vladimir Vladimirovich for about half an hour. During this time, we discussed the situation in Crimea, where everyone expressed their position and their view of the situation. Both Putin and Dzhemilev did not want any bloodshed in the Crimea, so it was necessary to find some way out of the situation, which was heating up every day more and more. Putin, as one might say, made a knight's move - he offered Mustafa to let his son go, but only on the condition that there would be calm in Crimea during the referendum. Dzhemilev promised that he would do everything that depended on him. Initially, the politicians wanted to meet, but a telephone conversation showed that there was nothing more to talk about. The meeting has been cancelled.

Today

Today, Mustafa is one of the most radical politicians in Ukraine. Hatred towards Russia is caused not only by the tension between the Russian Federation and Ukraine, but also by resentment for the loss of Crimea, Mustafa's homeland.

The politician was awarded dozens of orders and medals, which were given to him for agitation and propaganda purposes by the governments of various pro-Western countries. In his interviews, Mustafa prophesies the fate of Germany to Russia, comparing the annexation of Crimea with the seizure of Poland and Austria by German troops before World War II.

In closing

MustafaDzhemilev, like any political figure, public and ideological leader, is a very complex figure. And depending on which side you have to take in the conflict, you have to look at the same events in different ways. In this article, we analyzed the biography of the leader of the Crimean Tatars, Ukrainian politician, former Soviet dissident Mustafa Dzhemilev.