Can Turks and Crimean Tatars understand each other? The term "Crimean Tatar" has been in use since the early modern period to refer to the native Turkic population of Crimea. Did you know that up until the 19th century this Turkic group consisted of the majority of the population of Crimea? When the Russian Empire annexed the Crimean Khanate in the late 18th century, the Tatars consisted of 90% of the population. Since then they have faced severe persecution. During World War II, Joseph Stalin ordered their expulsion from Crimea. In a matter of a few days a huge portion of their entire population was forcibly deported to Central Asia by the Soviet secret police in cattle cars. It's estimated that half of them died before they even reached the inhumane labor camps. The majority of the villages and geographic features in Crimea that had Turkic names were given Slavic names shortly after the deportation as part of the Soviet efforts to erase all traces of their presence from Crimea. A decade before the fall of the Soviet Union, their population had dropped to less than 1%, from 90% just two centuries prior. A relatively small percentage of exiled Crimean Tatars returned back after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Today, the language is considered to be severely endangered, and part of the Crimean Tatars' cultural revival consists of efforts in preserving the language and literature. This is why I'm very happy to feature it in this video.

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Crimean Tatar and Turkish belong to different branches of the Turkic language family. But as mentioned in the video, Crimean Tatar is very unique in the sense that all of its three main dialects belong to different branches of Turkic languages, and the degree of mutual intelligibility with Turkish varies depending on the dialect.

In this video Lenur, Akhtem, Eylül, and Onur will demonstrate to what extent Turkish and Crimean Tatar speakers can understand each other.

The Turkish language, which is also referred to as Istanbul Turkish, is the official language of Turkey (Türkiye) and is the most widely spoken of the Turkic languages, with most of its native speakers living in Western Asia, and significant group of speakers in Germany, Bulgaria, Macedonia, Northern Cyprus, Greece, the Caucasus, and other parts of Europe and Central Asia. Ottoman Turkish, which was a variation of the Turkish spoken today, influenced many parts of Europe during the time that the Ottoman Empire expanded. When the modern Turkish republic was established, one of Atatürk's Reforms consisted of changing the Ottoman Turkish alphabet with a Latin alphabet. Today, Turkish is recognized as a minority language in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Greece, Iraq, Macedonia, and Romania.

The Turkic languages consist of over 35 different documented languages, originating from East Asia. Turkish has the highest number of native speakers out of all Turkic language. There is a high degree of mutual intelligibility among the various Oghuz languages, which include Turkish, Azerbaijani, Turkmen, Qashqai, Gagauz, Balkan Gagauz Turkish and Oghuz-influenced Crimean Tatar.