What threatens the Majlis?

Simferopol—In spite of all the efforts that the Majlis of the Crimean Tatar People is making, the leadership of this organization finds it increasingly difficult to resist such a dangerous trend as the fragmentation of the Crimean Tatars’ political field—especially in the course of informational campaigns aimed at shaping a negative image of the Majlis and Mustafa Jemilev personally. There are various spin-control schemes applied here, especially media publications that claim that the Majlis now has a lot of rivals and it will be more difficult for Jemilev to muster Crimean Tatar votes.

Among the organizations that incite these sentiments are a few relatively big associations (Milliy Firqa, Nadir Bekirov’s group, Namus, etc.) and a number of smaller groups (Khubeidin Khubeidinov’s Coordination Council, Milliy Areket Pariyasi, Ibraim Voienny’s Koideshler, etc.).

In practice, the situation is not as simple as may seem at first glance: not all the political forces that consider themselves rivals of the Majlis are really such. For example, the civic organization Avdet, whose members are picketing the Cabinet of Ministers with a demand to solve the repatriates’ land ownership problems, is presented by some Crimean publications as a “rival” of the Crimean Tatars’ representative body. A detailed analysis of the situation shows that it would be totally wrong to say now that there is any noticeable rivalry between Avdet and the Majlis.

In the public mind, Jemilev’s vis- -vis are associated, above all, with the Crimean Tatar politicians and their organizations that criticize certain actions of the Majlis. As for the electoral preferences of Crimean indigenes, the Crimean Tatars’ representative body can face actual rivalry on the part of a different-spectrum political force, such as the BYuT.

Incidentally, it is a noticeable trend for the BYuT’s Crimean organization to challenge the Majlis over the Tatars’ votes. The situation heated up during the early parliamentary election in the fall of 2007, when Andrii Senchenko, head of the BYuT’s Crimean office, publicly accused the Majlis of exerting pressure on its campaigners and the Tatars who support the BYuT.

The Majlis rejected the charge as an absurdity that has nothing to do with reality. The spring of this year saw another “exchange of courtesies” between Senchenko and Jemilev, who accused each other of corruption and land-distribution machinations on the Crimea’s southern coast. The two sides are thus trying, in various ways, to discredit their opponents in the eyes of voters.

As for Avdet, this organization was registered in April 2007 by a group of Crimean Tatar national movement activists. According to the organization’s official website, it aims “to improve the well-being and restore the spiritual values of the Crimean Tatar people; to assist field protesters in drawing up proper documents and provide them with legal aid; to take part in negotiations with government bodies; and to protect field protesters from police and bureaucratic brutality.”

According to official information, the number of members and followers is now 15,000. Practically all participants in field protest actions are automatically put on the list of full-time members. This made it possible to set up about 120 cells, with the leadership planning to bring the number up to 1,000 by the end of the year. Avdet is formally led by Mustafa Maushev, head of a Simferopol field of protest. But many believe that his better-known colleague Daniyal Ametov, ex-advisor to the Crimean Supreme Council Speaker Anatolii Hrytsenko, is the actual leader of this organization.

At first the relations between the Avdet leaders and the Majlis were referred to as “difficult,” although none of them denied the very system of local self-government for the Tatars. “The Majlis is a popularly elected body. So there should be a dialogue with the authorities, not with the Majlis. The authorities seem to be unable or unwilling to address problems because the latter have not yet been solved. The problem is with the authorities,” Ametov said in an interview. The Avdet leadership thus seems to have distanced itself from the policy of being a Crimean Tatar representative body and accepted the existence of a political entity built by Jemilev and his inner circle. But the Avdet leaders who have grouped themselves around Ametov, informally called “king of squatters,” are trying to use the methods other than those applied by representatives of the other bodies in opposition to the Majlis.

The situation began to change about two months ago, when the Avdet leaders started politicizing their demands: they organized a picket in front of the Cabinet of Ministers in Kyiv, which turned then into a hunger strike. In the course of this action, the Avtet members made some political statements that make us look at this organization from a different angle.

One of the picket organizers, Rinat Shaimardanov, told journalists that they were going to turn to a proper EU or UN body over infringements of the rights of the Crimea’s indigenous population. “If Ukraine continues to consider the plight of the Crimean Tartars a minor problem, this will become the central problem of Ukraine,” he said. “We will cut off Ukraine’s road to the European Union,” he said, reports UNIAN. In his words, the organization’s leadership has held preliminary consultations at the Council of Europe’s office.

It is common knowledge that the Majlis is also appealing to the world public. For example, on May 18 this year the memorial rally devoted to the 65th anniversary of the deportation of Crimean Tatars passed a resolution that called upon UN and European Union bodies to help restore the rights of the Crimean Tatar people. The Avdet leadership has chosen to go the same way.

The similarity of actions is only natural because, contrary to the reaction of some Crimean media to Avdet’s actions, this organization’s leadership not only accepts the existing system of national self-government but also does not consider itself a rival of the Majlis. “Any rivalry with the Majlis is out of the question. We, as a civic organization, can only advance proposals that will be discussed by the Majlis presidium or the kurultai (Crimean Tatar national congress—Ed.),” says Maushev, Avdet board chairman and a kurultai delegate. Incidentally, three more delegates of his civic organization are represented at the kurultai. What is more, Maushev is member of the commission in charge of the local majlis elections now underway in the Crimea.

The very fact that the head (even a titular one) of a civic organization is a Majlis functionary calls into question the claim about rivalry between Avdet and the Crimean Tatar representative body. Of the same opinion is the Majlis spokesman Shevket Kaibullaiev. He, too, can see no grounds for rivalry between Avdet and the Majlis because they are different-level entities. “It is nonsensical to compare a civic organization and the Majlis and kurultai system, for these bodies have different mechanisms of formation,” Kaibullaiev said.

As for political prospects, Maushev says nothing is being planned in addition to turning to the Council of Europe with the above-mentioned requests. The organization’s head is, in fact, insisting that politics is the Majlis’s preserve, while the organization he represents will continue helping the Tatars, as much as it can, to solve the problems of land ownership and housing.

Obviously, the Avdet leadership is closely watching a highly changeable political situation and so far refrains from attempts to persuade their members to vote for a certain Ukrainian presidential candidate. “My personal opinion, one of an ordinary person rather than a civic organization head, is that our people do not need to take part in the elections at all,” Maushev said.

Naturally, some political forces inside and outside the Crimean Autonomy may feel a desire to use this organization in their own interests. The Avdet-organized picket in Kyiv, which then turned into a hunger strike, is somewhat special. What catches your eye is that the picketers harshly criticized the current Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko and her cabinet right under the windows of the latter. But no grave accusations were brought against the Presidential Secretariat. This cannot but irritate the prime minister’s followers in the Crimea.

Majlis representatives are claiming that there is no question now of real opposition to them on the agenda. As a matter of fact, all those who call themselves opposition agree that there must be a system of national self-government. The root cause is discontent with the actions of the Crimean Tatar representative body in the person of Mustafa Jemilev who his political adversaries believe has lost control over the situation in the Crimean Tatar milieu and is unable to persuade his compatriots to vote for one candidate or another.

Conversely, Kaibullaiev is sure that the Majlis leadership can exert proper control over the Tatars during the election campaign. It is not yet known which of the presidential candidates the Majlis leadership will support. “We are so far watching the situation, but I will say in no uncertain terms that it will be a representative of democratic forces,” Kaibullaiev notes.

The most difficult factor for the Majlis is not the existence of a competitive center of force but the fact that the Crimean Tatars and the entire Ukrainian society are tired of politics. The Majlis leadership finds it difficult to work not because the opposition is “siphoning off” votes but because there is a real danger of political nihilism now being spread among the Crimean Tatars, who are disappointed with any kind of government. Both the Majlis and the groups that continuously criticize it can suffer political losses in this situation.