Editor’s Note: This article is a part of the “Journalism of Tolerance” project by the Kyiv Post and its affiliated non-profit organization, the Media Development Foundation. The project covers challenges faced by sexual, ethnic and other minorities in Ukraine, as well as people with physical disabilities and those living in poverty. This project is made possible by the support of the American people through the U.S. Agency for International Development and Internews. Content is independent of the donors.
Parents usher their children into School No. 165 in Kyiv’s downtown on a recent Saturday morning. “Selâm aleyküm,” one woman greets another in the Crimean Tatar language – the phrase a borrowing from Arabic, meaning “Peace be upon you.”
For two years now, Crimean Tatars have been taking their children in the Ukrainian capital twice a week for the classes of Crimean Tatar language, dance and singing.
Anife Kurtseitova, head of the non-governmental organization Crimean Family, says before Russia annexed Crimea in March 2014, there were only a few families of Crimean Tatars who went to such classes in Kyiv.
Since then, the attendance has grown and reached 120 children from 80 Crimean Tatar family between five and 12 years old.
As the Russian authorities make life harder for Crimean Tatars in Crimea by banning their religious literature and labeling Tatar representative body Mejlis as an extremist organization, more Crimean Tatars move to Kyiv.
While they find no Crimean Tatar schools or classes in Kyiv, the families send their children to national dance, singing and language classes in School No. 165 as a way to keep them in touch with their traditions.
“I look at my children and realize that they could lose the Crimean Tatar culture, the language,” Kurtseitova told the Kyiv Post.
Kurtseitova says that the Crimean Tatar children are adapting well to life in Kyiv. In February, School No. 165 celebrated a day of the Crimean Tatar people. The school students performed together with the Crimean Tatar children who visit the evening cultural classes.
New children enroll in the Crimean Tatar classes almost every week.
Seeing such interest, the Crimean Tatar community plans to start a regular class in one of the public schools, where the teaching will be done in Crimean Tatar language. Ten children have already enrolled in it. The class will start in September.
But maintaining such a class will not be an easy task. The Crimean Tatar families that moved to Kyiv are scattered throughout the city and the suburbs, meaning that many will have a long daily school commute.
Also, the idea faces a lack of qualified Crimean Tatar teachers and textbooks in the Crimean Tatar language. Nevertheless, Kurtseitova thinks such problems can be overcome.
The community is still discussing whether the curriculum should include Islamic studies.
Meanwhile, in Crimea itself, the Crimean Tatars face relentless pressure from the Russian occupiers, according to Yulia Tyshchenko, head of programs at the Ukrainian Center for Independent Political Research.
Tyshchenko said that the number of the classes taught in the Crimean Tatar language decreased in Crimea after the Russian annexation. In 2014, 57 Crimean Tatar language classes existed in Crimea, while in 2015 there were only 35 classes.
Tyshchenko blamed the decrease on the hostility of the Russian authorities – which, she said, also extended to Ukrainian-language schools.
