On Thursday, February 16, a meeting was held at the office of the Mejlis of the Crimean Tatar people with the Commissioner for the Protection of the State Language Taras Kremin and his deputy Yurii Zubko.
The meeting was also attended by Chairman of the Mejlis of the Crimean Tatar People Refat Chubarov, Head of the Board of the Crimean Tatar Resource Center, Head of the Department for Legal and Foreign Affairs of Mejlis of the Crimean Tatar People Eskender Bariiev, MP Akhtem Chiyhoz and member of the Mejlis Riza Shevkiev
During the meeting, the problems of the Crimean Tatar language as the language of the indigenous people of Ukraine were discussed. In particular, Eskender Bariiev, Chairman of the Board of the CTRC, noted that in Ukraine there is no institute of the language of indigenous peoples, which would be involved in the development of the Crimean Tatar language. In addition, there is no position of Commissioner or his deputy for the protection of the language of indigenous peoples.
“An acute problem is the transliteration of Crimean Tatar names. Unfortunately, there are no uniform rules for writing Crimean Tatar names in Ukrainian, and therefore names are often spelled incorrectly in documents”,- he explained.
Taras Kremin was informed that the Crimean Tatar Resource Center and the Mejlis of the Crimean Tatar people launched an information and advocacy campaign Return the names – return Crimea, aimed at restoring historical toponyms in Crimea.
“It is important to talk about this, because the destruction of historical toponyms in Crimea is an element of linguocide”,- Bariiev emphasized.
The parties agreed on the need for joint advocacy and development of the language of the indigenous people. In particular, they discussed holding a joint press conference dedicated to Mother Language Day, during which the problems of the development of the Ukrainian language and the Crimean Tatar language in Ukraine will be outlined.