Tataren: Wie virtuelle Medien den realen Zusammenhalt von Vertriebenen fördern

Mit dem Aufstieg des Internet im letzten Jahrzehnt begannen die in der Diaspora lebenden Krimtataren das Internet für die Vernetzung der in aller Welt lebenden Tataren in einer elektronischen Umgebung einzusetzen. Sie nutzen das Internet, um ihren Fall einer internationalen Öffentlichkeit bekanntzumachen und stehen in Kontakt mit Wissenschaftlern, Menschenrechtsaktivisten und Journalisten. Zu diesem Zweck wurde verschiedene Websites und E-Mail-Listen eingerichtet, selbst Fundraising wird per E-Mail betrieben. Das Internet hat die Art und Weise, wie die Krimtataren ihre politischen Ziele verfolgen, entschieden verändert.

In the last decade, with the rise of the Internet, the Crimean Tatar Diaspora began using the Internet services to bring together the Tatars all around the world in an electronic environment. They utilize the Internet to publicize their cause to an international audience and have access to scholars, human rights activists, and journalists. Several Web sites and e-mail lists were created for this purpose, and even fundraising activities were initiated by e-mail. The Internet has changed the way the Crimean Tatars accomplish their political goals.

1. INTRODUCTION

The term ‘Diaspora’ originated from the Greek words dia (through) and speirein (to scatter). Even though this term is used in different ways, it is generally accepted that a ‘diaspora’ is a geographically scattered nation. The original Greek use of the term had a negative connotation, implying processes of dispersion and decomposition, or a dissolution into various parts without any further relation to each other. If we look at the history of Crimean Tatars, we see that they experienced a similar dispersion and dissolution. Especially after the 1944 deportation, they were wiped out from their homeland and lost communication with the Tatar Diaspora in different countries. However, especially in the last 20-30 years, Crimean Tatars started to recover from this forced separation and dissolution. In this paper, we intend to show the ways the Internet is helping Crimean Tatars to accomplish their political goals and the nature of the cyber community they have formed over the Net. 2. CRIMEAN TATARS: HISTORY

The Crimean Tatars are native inhabitants of the Crimean peninsula, now a part of Ukraine (Figure-1). According to historians, they are considered to be descendants of Turkic peoples (e.g. Khazars, Petchenegs, Kipchacks), who had settled in Eastern Europe as early as the seventh century. The sixteenth century was the most powerful era in the history of the Crimean Tatars 3. CRIMEAN TATAR DIASPORA

Under the oppressive Tsarist policies, Crimean Tatars began leaving their homeland. Emigrations to the lands of the Ottoman Empire continued thru the nineteenth century, especially after the Crimean War (1853-56), when hundreds of thousands of Crimean Tatars were forced to migrate in a short period. "Crimea without Crimean Tatars" was a Russian political goal, which was also adopted by the Soviet rulers. It was estimated that between 1783 and 1920, some 1.800.000 Crimean Tatars were forced to emigrate to the Ottoman Empire and thus became a "minority" in their ancestral homeland. The Crimean Tatar population decreased to less than 300,000 on the eve of the Bolshevik Revolution. Perhaps the most terrible date in the Crimean Tatar history is May 18, 1944. On that day and the following days, the entire Crimean Tatar population, mostly women, children and the elderly, was rounded up, taken to the nearest train station to be loaded onto cattle wagons, and shipped off to the Urals, Siberia and Central Asia (mostly Uzbekistan). Due to hunger, thirst, and disease, about half of the total Crimean Tatar population perished during deportation. The survivors of this tragic event were forced to live in "Special Settlement Camps." The Crimean Tatars’ national struggle for repatriation continued well into 1980s. During the Gorbachov years, the Glasnost and Perestroika (openness and restructuring) policy allowed the Crimean Tatars in exile to return to their homeland from different parts of the former Soviet Union. Today, about 300,000 Crimean Tatars are living in Crimea, attempting to rebuild a new life and a new future. However, another 300,000 are still in exile in Central Asia, especially in Uzbekistan. There is an estimated five million people of Crimean origin living in Turkey, descendants of those who emigrated in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Other Crimean Tatar communities are also found in Romania, Bulgaria, Germany and the United States. There may also be scattered small communities in almost every Western country. 4. PAST: COMMUNICATION WITH THE DIASPORA BEFORE THE INTERNET

It is very unfortunate that the Western world and the Crimean Tatar Diaspora were unaware of the details of the remarkable national struggle of the Crimean Tatar people for quite sometime. The Soviet authorities skillfully kept the news from reaching outside the iron curtain until July 1969 when the Crimean Tatars held their first public demonstration in a Moscow square, which coincided with the Tashkent trials (1). July 1, 1969 marks a turning point in the history of Crimean Tatar National Movement. Ten Crimean Tatar dissidents went on trial in Tashkent, Uzbek SSR, for allegedly defaming the Soviet motherland. The transcripts of the Tashkent Trial were smuggled out of the USSR and reached London, England. These transcripts provided a great deal of information on the plight of the Crimean Tatar people in the Soviet Union, not only for the western media, but also for the Crimean Tatar Diaspora. After learning more about the status of their compatriots’ courageous fight against the Soviet authorities, a small group of Crimean Tatars in New York became actively involved in supporting the Crimean Tatar National Movement (2). Before the Internet era and during the Soviet regime, phone contacts between leading Crimean Tatar political dissidents and diaspora members were extremely limited. In addition to the lack of telecommunication facilities in the USSR, there were other problems associated with the secrecy of dissident activities. For example, members of the Crimean Tatar National Center in New York gathered once a month and contacted leaders of the Crimean Tatars in the Soviet Union via telephone to find out the status of the national movement. Since the telephones were tapped, and the KGB usually listened to conversations, special code words were used to find out how things were progressing. For example, "How are the carnations growing in your garden?" meant, "how is the national movement going?" Carnation symbolized the national movement. The use of regular mail was also very limited during that time, and especially for certain critical documents it was almost impossible to use the postal system. From time to time, the National Center in New York received documents relating to the Crimean Tatar National Movement that were smuggled out of the Soviet Union. Depending on the importance, these documents were either distributed to other organizations or published by the Center itself. For example, in the early 1970s a member of the National Center traveled to London to hand deliver some documents to the editor of the Chronicle of Current Events, a journal specializing in human rights movements in the USSR and Eastern Europe. During this trip the National Center learned that The Herzen Foundation in Amsterdam was planning to publish the Tashkent Trials. The New York group not only made a small contribution toward the publication but also provided translations from Crimean Tatar to Russian. The Taskentsky Prosess, published by the Herzen Foundation in 1976, is one of the extensive works compiled on the Crimean Tatar National Movement. Another striking example of limited communication between the Crimean Tatars in the Soviet Union and the diaspora involves the hunger strike of legendary Crimean Tatar leader, Mustafa Cemiloglu (Cemilev) in June 1975. A New York congressman was informed of the hunger strike after a two-month delay because of slow and clandestine nature of communications. The above activities are some examples of how the Crimean Tatar Diaspora in the United States tried to support the Crimean Tatar National Movement in the Soviet Union during the pre-Internet era. They show how difficult it was to disseminate information during the most crucial period of the Crimean Tatar National Movement. It is also important to remember that all these activities were carried out by a handful of dedicated individuals who sacrificed a great deal of their time and effort to disseminate information about an extremely important cause, the survival of an ethnic group as a nation and people. It was a very difficult time because the means to inform the American and world public were very limited. Under the normal circumstances, all these activities enabled the Crimean Tatar Diaspora in New York to reach a small audience, 500 to 1,000 at the most. It took quite some time to get the political or other important messages out. There was no Internet then, one could not sit in front of a small tube and reach out to a large audience to disseminate one’s message.   5. TODAY: THE INTERNET AND THE COMMUNICATION WITH THE DIASPORA

In the mid 1990s, Crimean Tatars in Crimea and the Diaspora began using the Internet services to bring together the Tatars all around the world in an electronic environment. Today they utilize the Internet to publicize their cause to an international audience and have access to scholars, human rights activists, and journalists. Several Web sites and electronic discussion lists were created for this purpose, and even such activities as fundraising were initiated by e-mail. 5.1. Background

Similar to many other less developed parts of the world, Crimea also suffers from a lack of quality telecommunications infrastructure. Crimea had a very limited Eunet/Relcom connectivity at the beginning of the 1990s. In 1993, TUBITAK (Turkish NSF) attempted to bring Internet connectivity to a research center in Crimea with NATO funding. However this attempt was not successful for several reasons. Finally, in 1995, Crimean Tatars established the first e-mail connection by the Rebirth of Crimea Foundation in Bakchisaray. 5.2. Crimean Tatar Internet Resources

5.2.1. Electronic Discussion Lists

Crimea-L is a moderated discussion list dedicated to Crimea and Crimean Tatar people. It is open to any interested individual who may wish to join it. It was established on 24 November 1998 by the International Committee for Crimea (Washington, DC), with the efforts of Fevzi Alimoglu, who remains the moderator of Crimea-L. As of April 2001, Crimea-L has over 400 members. Since its founding, the membership has been increasing steadily, with 272 members on Sept. 5, and 336 members on December 31, 2000. An analysis of the membership list at the end of the year 2000 showed that at least 23 countries are represented on Crimea-L. While most members live in Turkey, U.S., Ukraine, Germany, and Russia, the group extends from Brazil to Estonia, and from Canada to Australia. Remaining countries include Norway, England, Holland, France, Austria, Poland, Hungary, Lithuania, Yugoslavia, Czech Republic, Romania, Israel, Uzbekistan and New Zealand. (There may be members from other countries, but it is not possible to determine one's country from e-mail addresses such as "yahoo.com" "aol.com" or "hotmail.com.") We believe that those who speak Turkish or Tatar form the majority. In an effort to reach all those interested in Crimea and Crimean Tatars, members continue to communicate in English and Turkish. (der vollständige Artikel ist im Web verfügbar)

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