In person and Online event.
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Meeting ID: 981 8050 3406
This lecture is co-sponsored by the Karpat Center for Turkish Studies.
About the Lecture: The Turkic and Muslim Crimean Tatars are the native people of Crimea. They are heirs to the Crimean Khanate, which ruled the peninsula for centuries until the Russian Empire annexed Crimea in 1783. Following Russia’s oppressive colonization of Crimea, hundreds of thousands of Crimean Tatars were forced to emigrate to the Ottoman Empire and, later, to Turkey. Their plight culminated in their genocidal mass deportation to Central Asia and the Urals in 1944.
After enduring almost half a century of exile under harsh conditions, they began to return to their homeland largely on their own. They were not welcomed by local Soviet, and later post-Soviet, officials, who were predominantly ethnic Russians. Despite these obstacles, the Crimean Tatars struggled to rebuild their lives and basic institutions in Crimea.
When Russia invaded Crimea and declared its annexation of the peninsula in 2014, the Crimean Tatars, who were staunch supporters of Ukrainian independence, became targets of Russian repression. Harsh measures have been used to suppress them ever since. Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 further worsened the situation of the Crimean Tatars, who found themselves caught between the two sides of the conflict.
About the speaker: Dr. Hakan Kirimli is Professor of International Relations at Bilkent University in Ankara, where he has taught since 1991. He earned his PhD in History from the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 1990 after studies at Hacettepe University and the Ukrainian Free University in Munich. He has also been a visiting scholar at Harvard University and Stanford University.
A leading specialist on the history of the Turkic and Muslim peoples of the Russian Empire, Kirimli’s research focuses particularly on the Crimean Tatars and on Turko-Russian and Turko-Ukrainian relations. His numerous publications include The Crimean Tatar and Nogay Village Settlements in Turkey (2012), Crimean Tatar Architectural Monuments in Crimea (2016), and The Gerays and Ottomans (2022). His work has appeared in leading international journals, including Middle Eastern Studies, Der Islam, Central Asian Survey, and Cahiers du Monde Russe et Soviétique. Among other honors, he received Ukraine’s Cross of Ivan Mazepa in 2023 and the Turkish Academy of Sciences’ Halil İnalcık Special Award in History.