We continue to familiarize our readers with the structure of the Mejlis of the Crimean Tatar People and the balance of power within it. The first part of this series is here, and the next part is here.‍

Formally, the term of the 6th Qurultay of the Crimean Tatar People ended in November 2018. At that time, the term of office for the Mejlis it had elected also expired. Before the full-scale war, attempts were made to convene the Qurultay both on the Ukrainian mainland and (at the initiative of the occupiers) in Crimea. According to the Qurultay's rules of procedure, one-third of its members may request the convening of an extraordinary session with the approval of the Mejlis. At least two-thirds of the delegates must be present at the meeting. Neither the Kyiv-based nor the Crimean initiators managed to secure the support of even half of the delegates.

In Crimea, they managed to collect 90 signatures out of 248, but the Mejlis did not approve this initiative and attempted to convene the Qurultay in Kyiv. In the Ukrainian capital, as of November 2018, the situation was as follows: 75 delegates dared to travel from the occupied peninsula (30.2% of the total membership); 18 delegates were deemed Russian collaborators (7.2%); 6 delegates had died between 2014 and 2018 (2.4%); 149 delegates (60%) did not support the Kyiv initiative, though they did not collaborate with Russian collaborators either.

Another 8 years have passed, and no one knows the new balance of power. The number of collaborators has not increased, but the number of people able to travel to the Ukrainian mainland has decreased significantly. Therefore, no one is even attempting to reconvene the Qurultay at this time. Everyone adheres to an unwritten rule: the powers of the previous delegation cease after the newly elected members take their oaths. Consequently, all current elected representatives retain their seats until such elections become possible.

‍The Komsomol said “We must” — the aksakals said “No”

In 2021, young Crimean Tatar activists from several civil society organizations loudly demanded that electronic elections be held for a new Qurultay, with the possibility for residents of occupied Crimea to participate. A few months before Russia’s full-scale invasion, several meetings dedicated to electoral digitization took place at the Mejlis’s office in Kyiv. “Komsomols” was clearly inspired by the “Diya — The State in Your Smartphone” app, launched in 2020. But in Russia, a scandal erupted in September 2021 over the falsification of the results of the electronic elections to the Moscow City Duma. And in Ukraine, starting in January 2022, there were regular waves of rumors about data leaks from “Diya.” As a result, the idea of voting for a new Qurultay using modern technology has been shelved, and its initiators prefer not to mention it anymore.

United Crimean Tatar Emirates

In 2024, the Crimean Tatars crossed a psychological threshold — 10 years of the occupation of Crimea. By this point, politicians had gone nearly 11 years without elections, and the Crimean Tatar “Komsomol” came up with a new idea — to strengthen national institutions through civic and/or youth councils. This time, the ambitious young generation’s idea did not meet with rejection from the older generation. Mejlis Chairman Refat Chubarov publicly announced a call for proposals and even held several meetings on the topic. The proposal to create civic councils was also supported by Eskender Bariev, a current member of the internal Mejlis opposition. In his view, the Mejlis’s administrative departments could be strengthened by newcomers from the civic councils. Currently, there are eleven such departments; many of them are in a state of dormancy, and they can only be headed by incumbent Mejlis members, who cannot be re-elected. In this way, the “aksakals” would retain their seats but would be spurred into action by the presence of competitive young people around them. If Bariev’s idea is implemented, the Mejlis will become a symbiosis of 11 political departments — or “emirates” — with small, elected entourages, but with permanent emirs and a monarch at the helm.

Essentially, this involves decentralizing the Mejlis’s work and empowering each of its individual members.

Public councils have become a popular platform in Ukraine for activists, non-parliamentary parties, and journalists. Society has gained a sense of control over ministries. This primarily concerns structures whose leaders are appointed and who make unilateral decisions in the form of orders.

But how can an elected community council influence an elected body that cannot be re-elected? A second unpleasant but important question: what will happen to the Mejlis if the occupation of Crimea continues, say, for another 12 years? While any decisions made by the representative body can currently be considered legitimate at least because of the numerical superiority of those who have not collaborated with Moscow, in 12 years many of those elected in 2013 may no longer be with us for natural reasons… May Allah prolong their days…