Crimean Tatar publishing house Kitap Qalesi established in Ukraine

In Ukraine, a Crimean Tatar publishing house, Kitap Qalesi (meaning "Book fortress" in translation from Crimean Tatar), was established.

Rubryka writes about this, referring to the corresponding post that appeared on the project's Instagram.

What is the problem?

Crimean Tatars are the indigenous people of Crimea. They are an inseparable part of the Ukrainian political nation and have lived on this territory since time immemorial.

However, since 1990 and even after the events of 2014, the Ukrainian and Crimean Tatar communities seem to be in parallel worlds. There is no good familiarity with the past and present of the Crimean Tatars among Ukrainian-speaking citizens and vice versa.

There is currently no complete integration of Crimean Tatar culture, literature, and history into Ukrainian culture.

In addition, insufficient attention is paid to the indigenous people's language development.

What is the solution?

A Crimean Tatar project appeared in Ukraine – Kitap Qalesi, which means "Book Fortress".

Kitap Qalesi is a social business in the development stage that plans to develop Crimean Tatar book publishing. The project is not part of any organization; the initiators plan to register their own.

The idea to create a publishing house belongs to Sofia Ostrozka. She has experience in creating and organizing projects, including grant projects.

"Our goal is the development of the Crimean Tatar language with the help of literature," the organizers say.

How does it work?

In a comment for the "Lirum" edition, Ostrozka noted that among the founders, there are both Crimean Tatars and Ukrainian women, in particular:

• Arslan Fazilov, a philologist of the Crimean Tatar language who has translation and teaching experience;
• Dzhemilye Abliakimova,
• and SMM manager Daria Pyvovarova.

The organizers plan to:

• to transliterate classic Crimean Tatar literature into Latin;
• make translations into Ukrainian;
• in the future to develop and publish modern Crimean Tatar authors.

The team is currently working on the first book. They promise to show the process on their Instagram page.

For reference:

In Ukraine, an online platform called "National Corpus of the Crimean Tatar Language" will be created.

In addition, Rubryka wrote about the presence in Kyiv of a series of graphic plates with dates located in different places of the capital and a mobile application that connects the plates with each other and tells, in simple words, the centuries-old history of the oppression of the Ukrainian language.

"Despite 400 years of persecution, our language has not disappeared and has always looked for loopholes to develop. The vitality of our language is the most impressive," says project author Valentyna Merzhievska.

Rubryka wrote about the work of this project. Read more in our material: "Lingvocide": how signs in Kyiv and a mobile application tell about Russia's attempts to destroy the Ukrainian language.