#krymchaks

[bobemajses]

Two Karaite men at the ruins of Chufut Kale in the Crimean mountains, ca. 1910s.

Chufut-Kale is a medieval city-fortress in southern Crimea. Its Turkic name stands for "Jewish Fortress", while Crimean Karaites refer to it as simply as "Fortress", viewing the place as a historical center of their community. From the 17th century, it was almost exclusively inhabited by Karaite and Krymchak Jews, until it was abandoned in the early 20th century, because of a lack of water in the mountains.

[thenuclearmallard]

History of the Indigenous peoples of Crimea.

[songs-of-the-east]

There are four Turkic-speaking populations native to Ukraine. 

Three of them are native to Crimea. The Crimean Tatars being traditionally Muslims. Krymchaks were traditionally Rabbinic Jews. The Karaites on the other hand identified as Karaite Jews, however historical consequences lead the Karaites of Ukraine and Poland to identify themselves as distinct from the Jews of Eastern Europe and West Asia. Under the rule of the Russian Czar this lead them to have the same rights as Christians and Muslims of the area. Later after the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union this assertion lead to the Nazis identifying them as non-Jewish as well, thus preventing them from meeting the same fate as Krymchaks who were nearly obliterated as a people. Despite this genetic studies have shown that they have a similar origins with other European and Levantine Jews, and are genetic isolates alongside their Krymchak neighbors in comparison to their Muslim and Christian neighbors. 

The Gagauz are native the Bessarabia. They are unique among Turkic-speaking populations, alongside certain Volga Turkic populations in Russia, in that they converted to Eastern Orthodoxy in the Middle Ages.

It should be noted that the term Tatar is an umbrella term used for certain Turkic-speaking populations (or Slavic in the case of Polish Tatars) and that the term is highly ambiguous.