The Kremlin turns to account the increased focus of the West on the Crimean Tatars trying to tarnish their reputation in the eyes of European society.
A delegate of the World Congress of Crimean Tatars from Poland, Nedim Useinov stated this in his ‘Obozrevatel’ blog, according to channel 24.
"Putin also plays the Crimean Tartars card and uses all the levers to tarnish them. Specifically, he is playing on fears the West of Islamic terrorism and imposes this image on Crimean Tatars. The problem of West in this case is the lack of reliable information about the Crimean Tatars. They do not know who they are fighting for, how and by what means,” Useinov said.
Political analyst stressed that the Crimean Tatars find it difficult to refute this opinion.
They do not have such a propaganda resource. That is why Putin is playing, for example, occasionally arresting Crimean Tatars. When the West asks why they were detained, the Kremlin says, "these are the representatives of the Muslim community, our intelligence agencies suspect them of possessing banned Islamic or terrorist literature.” And no one in the West knows and remembers that the Crimean Tatars are not terrorists, we have not gone to extremes,” he writes.
According to him, the Europeans can retain in their minds a classical view that perhaps there is something wrong, once they check them. This is enough for Kremlin to create an image of the Crimean Tatars as potential terrorists.
Useinov believes that the Kremlin also manipulates this factor on the domestic market, threatening the Crimean Tatars.
“Any day they may come and detain you, they do to you what they want, and no one can they prevent it. All that is done for the purpose ofintimidatingCrimean Tatars, so they were afraid to speak on political issues, even among themselves and there was no certainty that they are not electronically surveilled. And tomorrow they come without explaining why,” concluded the political expert.