Лєране Ханум Куртнебі Кизи Lerane Hanum Kurtnebi Qizi

* 1980

  • I just remember being on board the plane, full of Crimean Tatar women with children and the elderly. And my mom baked my favorite puff pastry pies. There was no cake, we couldn't take any. I felt sick afterward because of those pies. There was a flight to Andizhan with a stopover in Naberezhnye Chelny, and the final stop was Simferopol. I remember that we arrived at night and were met at some remote terminal by many Crimean Tatar men who were waiting for their families. I ran out and shouted, “Baba, Baba!” — “Dad, Dad”. And then we drove for a long time, I thought it was very long because it was at night, there was no sense in looking out of the window. We arrived, got up in the morning, and there was this house, an old house, the yard was covered with weeds, grass, and there was such a mess everywhere, the stove... We lived in Uzbekistan in a two-story house with a bathroom and a toilet, we had our own room, and here we don't have our own room, the stove needs to be stoked, the water doesn't run from the tap, we have to carry it. My father fixed that later. We brought a boiler from Uzbekistan in a container, which my father had bought, and we installed it. And my dad made something like a bathtub out of bricks and tiles because there were no bathtubs, it was impossible to find a cast iron bathtub - there was a shortage. He installed a stove that was heated by a fireplace and divided the kitchen into a bathroom and a kitchen. Then he insulated the kitchen, changed the windows because the veranda was cold, and we got this kind of kitchen-meets-dining room. I spent my childhood until the age of 14 in the village, with all the charms of rural life. I herded sheep, my parents tended the gardens, and that's how we lived. Because there was a cow to milk, chickens, turkeys, gardens of 30 acres, and so on and so forth...

  • Rallies. Going to rallies. We used to go to Simferopol, to my aunt's. Oh, to go to Simferopol, the capital! Wow! And my aunt, she is now the chef of the Crimean Tatar restaurant chain Musafir, she lived not far from the central square of Simferopol, where these rallies were held. I saw it — so many of us! Wow! This is when there were few Crimean Tatars in everyday life, and here there were so many of us and our flags... Oh, I still remember when our anthem Ant Etkenmen played — this unity with all our people. And then trips to Sudak, the place of my mother's birth, Taraktash, which was later renamed Dachne in Soviet times. In Taraktash, when you simply arrive, everyone is speaking the Sudak dialect of the Crimean Tatar language. My God! In Sudak, if there was an opportunity to go to the sea, which was rare, however, because of the lack of money with all the construction and all the socio-economic realities, and so when I visited Sudak, it was a real pleasure! It was just... for some reason, a lot of Crimean Tatars went there, and I just heard my language everywhere. Everywhere. And this atmosphere in general, going through a Cyprus alley, Crimean Tatars beside, a Crimean Tatar cafe, you stay at a public transport stop, and there, too, young Crimean Tatars go, "Ta ta ta ta ta ta ta ta," speaking our dialect. This realization of home, the feeling of being at home, that you are in your own place. I would have loved to stay in Crimea in that condition. Of course, I am a citizen of Ukraine, and I am at home everywhere, I tell everyone that. But I can't convey that feeling of home. Even to feel it at least a little bit, in Irpin I taught my guests and the residents of Irpin to greet me with “selam aleikum.” I was riding my bike to buy herbs and vegetables when I discovered the Krymskyi Dvoryk [Crimean Courtyard]: “selam aleikum” — ‘selam aleikum’. And now I have been teaching it for six months in Lviv. Because it just keeps bursting out of me, one way or another.

  • I can't speak for all Crimean Tatars. As for me, I will definitely return to Crimea, God willing. If it happens during my life here. You know, I don't harbor any romantic dreams of returning to Crimea. I am just aware that I need to be there. Because there will be a lot of work there. I want to see my parents, whom I last saw in person in 2020. After those invaders, everyone will have their work cut out for them — Crimean Tatars, non-Crimean Tatars, and any citizens or non-citizens of Ukraine who want to clean up the crap that the orcs, the invaders, will leave us. And they will because this is their vile nature. That's why I don't know if all Crimean Tatars from mainland Ukraine will return to Crimea, I really don't know. Because they have already taken root over the course of 10 years. And some Crimean Tatars should probably stay here, on the mainland, because, thank God, among my fellow countrymen there are already highly professional statesmen who can adequately represent Ukraine at the national level and at the global level. I am very proud of such countrymen. I think everyone knows them. These are Arsen Zhumadilov, Emine Dzhaparova, Tamila Tasheva, and many, many compatriots who have become city and village deputies... Yes, they make mistakes, but who doesn't? And Rustem Umerov, the Minister of Defense... Who doesn't make those mistakes? Everyone makes those mistakes. But I am still proud of their work. I am proud of each of them. And where it is necessary to support them, I support them as much as I can. I think that some Crimean Tatars will stay here so that, again, this process of de-occupation and the establishment of Ukrainian institutions, the restoration of Ukrainian institutions in Crimea, should be synchronized with Kyiv. For many Ukrainians, the question of the status of Crimea is open: national-territorial autonomy or just an oblast? Even the discussion in Ukrainian society has both positive and negative undertones. And this is normal, this is democracy. As a Crimean Tatar, of course, I will be on the side of creating a national and cultural autonomy, a central-territorial autonomy, where the indigenous peoples will decide the future of Crimea, but, of course, it should be within the legal framework of Ukraine.

  • And then there was March 3. Since then, March 3 and the occupation of Crimea for me is the murder and abduction of Reshat Ametov, my neighbor. It was sunny and warm, and I just saw, I was outside, it was about 12 o'clock, in the afternoon. I saw: Zarina, Reshat Ametov's wife, is running. She can hardly stop herself from crying, from screaming, running to her closest friend, who is also a Crimean Tatar, Sana, almost crying, and her eldest son Ali is running after her. And he shouts, “Ana, ana!” — ”Mom, mom!” I stop her and say, “What happened?”. She says, “Reshat is not picking up the phone, he is not answering all the phone calls.” I say, “Give me [his] photo, let's post it, I'll post it on Facebook, and we'll look for him there.” And from that moment on, without realizing it, I became an activist. Then, we printed out these announcements and stuck them in crowded places - at bus stations, train stations, and markets. Later, we ran announcements on the ATR TV channel. It was only later that this video was found, where he was forcibly detained and led by the so-called “Cossacks” and the so-called self-defense under the arms and forced into a civilian car. That is, it was not law enforcement officers who did this; if he had violated public order, civil order, it would have been one thing. But he was just standing facing the building of the Council of Ministers in the central square of Simferopol. I'm not even sure if there was a Ukrainian flag there. Or maybe there was. He told his wife that he was going to the military registration and enlistment office. Again, this is about the story of the Euromaidan in Crimea when there were volunteers who wanted to go, went to military commissariats to volunteer. Probably, it was already there — these claims that something will happen soon, some kind of conflict. But I think that he had a spontaneous desire to demonstrate his protest in some way, and there was no time for any kind of meeting. It should be emphasized here that he was not a public person, he was not an activist, he was not a member of the Mejlis, although everyone in the Mejlis knew him and he used to visit the Mejlis. But he was a solitary man and a lone warrior. That's how he was. And he had this very heightened sense of justice. Even in small things. Unfortunately, on March 16, in the evening, I received a call from the legal department of the Mejlis of the Crimean Tatar people and was informed that they had found a body and that it was probably Reshat. Indeed, it was. At 7 p.m. we were in the Ametovs' house together with Emirali Ablayev, the mufti, then the mufti of Crimea, and now a collaborationist. Reza Shevkiev was also there, he is the head of the Crimea Foundation, now in Kyiv, and we brought the news to the Ametovs' house. And then it all began... I reported on all these events - the search, all the events of the search, how the family lives, how we are searching, and where we are searching. Even Reshat's own brother Refat appealed to those “Cossacks,” the so-called self-defense, and they told him so bluntly, “Of course, we will help you find your brother.” Of course, this did not happen. He was compelled to turn to them, because he really wanted to find Reshat. Then there was a funeral, just a day before the so-called referendum, a massive, very, very loud one. Reshat's funeral was loud and very crowded. Reshat wanted it that way... His last post on Facebook, on his page, was in Russian, I won't quote it verbatim, but, “Russian soldier, get out of Crimea. I'm going to protest tomorrow, who's with me?” Later, the FSB took the laptop, but that was his post. And so he wanted to have like-minded people with him, who felt that this was no simple [matter], that it was something paradoxical, absurd, something illegal, an illegal crime being committed at the global level. This was something that people with a very keen sense of justice could feel, of course. Then, basically, my daily interviews with different media, from different countries, began. Zarina, his wife, his widow, could no longer do this, physically and morally, of course. I just felt that I needed to speak out so that the whole world would know what was happening here. Because this was a tragedy of one Crimean Tatar family, which later became a tragedy of the entire Crimean Tatar people. I said, “Sit down”. She was crying, I said, “Sit, cry, I'll talk”. And so, in broken English, Turkish, Russian, I gave interviews to foreign media. Including Russian ones. I wanted them to know.

  • Before I left, I was planning what to do, I was thinking about it. I knew for sure that I had already lost my skills as a journalist, and there were many other journalists in Kyiv. And, you know, this prejudice that journalism... In Crimea, it was mostly biased. There was only one Ukrainian publication there, Krymska Svitlytsia. The most massive circulation was of the biased Krymska Pravda, so I didn't want an editor above me who would tell me how to write about Crimea, what happened there. I wanted Ukrainians to know the truth from first-hand sources, from me. Even if it were a small number of people, they would know firsthand. And it so happened that at the Heroiv Dnipra [Heroes of Dnipro] [metro] station, which has now been renamed the Ukrayinskykh Heroiv [Ukrainian Heroes] station, as far as I know, behind the ATB supermarket, I made my first attempt to dive into the restaurant business. And it was a cheburek shop, a simple, small, not very good place. But at that time, I didn't know all the subtleties of fast food and this business in general, I was essentially training there. And there I would tell people. I would put on Crimean Tatar music, I had transparent windows, but I made a model, my sister made me a model showing the landscapes of Crimea. There were also some Crimean landscapes inside. And it so happened that I was not just talking about the occupation, but generally talking about history and culture. At that time, I was diving even deeper, translating. There were songs, just recordings, and I translated these Crimean Tatar songs and told visitors about them. I followed the news about what was happening in Crimea at the time, told them how my parents had organized their lives under occupation, and that's how it happened. I found the component that was acceptable to me: through food, through music, through history, through my stories, to talk about Crimea.

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    Lviv , 15.03.2024

    (audio)
    duration: 02:28:41
    media recorded in project Memory of National Minorities of Ukraine
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People saw who I was, and I was just doing my job as best I could

Lerane Khanum Kurtnebi Qizi during the interview, 2024
Lerane Khanum Kurtnebi Qizi during the interview, 2024
photo: Post Bellum Ukraine

Lerane Khanum Kurtnebi Qizi is a Crimean Tatar entrepreneur and activist. She was born in 1980 in Uzbekistan, where her family was deported in 1944. At the age of eight, she returned to Crimea with her family. After entering the correspondence department of a journalism department after high school, she worked at the Dzhankoy district newspaper Zorya Prysivashshya and later at the agricultural magazine Niva. On March 3, 2014, after the disappearance of her neighbor Reshat Ametov, who participated in a peaceful protest against the occupation of Crimea by Russian troops, she joined the search for him. After the news of his death, she became an activist: she gave interviews to Western media and organized fundraising for the purchase of medicines for Euromaidan participants. On January 18, 2016, she left Crimea with her son and settled in Irpin, Kyiv region. For some time, she ran a small cheburek shop on the outskirts of Kyiv. She took an active part in public activities and cooperated with the Ministry of Information Policy and the Crimea SOS organization, which held mass rallies dedicated to the death of Reshat Ametov, the occupation, and Crimea. In February 2018, she opened the Krymskyi Dvoryk cafe in Irpin. On March 6, 2022, she moved to Lviv due to Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. There, she also opened a Krymskyi Dvoryk cafe to talk about Crimea through food and her experience.