And only out in the sands of Kazakstan did the transport guards open the doors, so as to toss out the corpses alongside the railway. They did not give us time to bury the dead. Many people went insane.
The majority of the Tatar community is well integrated into the mainstream population of Turkiye. Over the last several decades, the community in Turkiye produced many celebrities and high-ranking public and
political figures, such as Esin Engin and Nesrin Sipahi (singers), Aziz Nesin (a writer), Ahmet Ihsan Kirimli (the former minister of tourism), and Safa Giray (the former state minister). However, many members of
the community, especially some of the public figures, have no sense of or interest in being Crimean Tatars, even though in some cases their names clearly imply a Tatar background.
Unified in spirit, these three poets of Crimea made contributions in many other vital spheres of life. After the Crimean national government had been quashed in 1918 by Soviet armed forces, the example and actions of these men and many others firmed and developed modern Crimean Tatar national ideals.
"Wherever I went, I traced many. I saw the scattered Tatars"
Since my childhood I loved my Tatarness and my birthplace. I cried, suffered, and felt for them many a time. Wherever I went, I traced many. I saw the scattered Tatars. They haven't a single flowering rose to smell. They became true wanderers in their own homes and gardens. But to whom can you really tell them, these secrets? They have been thrown to the mountains, stony places and battles
by a strong wind. This imperfect world has become a grave for Tatarness, for the Tatar.
I paused and poured tear drops on top of every grave. For everyone of them I made a headstone from my songs.
Partly as a reaction to this situation, many Crimean Tatars preferred the use of Russian to a Central Asian tongue. Russian offered broader international communication than did a local medium and neutralized the assimilatory threat of the Central Asian languages. Observers have often noticed that Crimean Tatars born after 1942 seem most at home speaking and writing Russian, and some understandably lack a perfect control of their own language.