Tatarstan, the Republic of the Tatars

Tatarstan (Russian: Татарста́н) or Republic of Tatarstan is a federal entity of the Russian Federation, located in the Federal District of Volga. The area is 68,000 square kilometers and the population of about 3,800,000 inhabitants. Its capital is the city of Kazan with 1.2 million.

The official languages ​​of Tatarstan are Tatar and Russian.

"Tatarstan" derives from the name of the ethnic group - the Tartars - and the Persian suffix - stan. That is, country of the Tartars.

Geography

The Republic of Tatarstan is located in the center of the plain of Eastern Europe, approximately 800 kilometers (500 miles) east of Moscow. It is located between the Volga River and the Kama River (a tributary of the Volga), and extends eastward to the Ural Mountains.

Administrative and political aspects

The Republic of Tatarstan is a constituent republic of the Russian Federation consisting of 43 municipal districts and 2 urban districts and 39 urban settlements and 872 rural settlements.

The majority of Russian federal entities are linked to the federal government by the Uniform Federal Treaty, but the relations between the Tatarstan government and the Russian federal government are more complex and are defined in the Constitution of the Republic of Tatarstan.

On December 20, 2008, in response to Russia's recognition of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, the Milli Mejlis organization of the Tartar people declared Tatarstan independent and requested recognition from the United Nations. However, this statement was ignored by both the United Nations and the Russian government. On July 24, 2017, the autonomy agreement signed in 1994 between Moscow and Kazan expired, making Tatarstan the last republic of Russia to lose its special status.

Sunni Islam is the most common faith in Tatarstan, with 54% of the Muslim faith population, while the remaining population is mostly Russian Orthodox Christian or non-religious.

In 1990 there were 100 mosques, but the number, as of 2004, increased to more than 1,000. In 2008, 1,398 religious organizations were registered, of which 1,055 were Muslim.

Economy

Tatarstan is one of the most economically developed regions in Russia. The republic is highly industrialized and occupies second place after the Samara Oblast in terms of industrial production per km2. In 2017, Tatarstan GDP per capita was $ 10,000, with a total GDP of approximately $ 35 billion.

The main source of wealth in the region is oil. Tatarstan produces 32 million tons of crude oil per year and has oil reserves estimated at more than one billion tons. Industrial production constitutes 45% of the gross domestic product of the Republic. The most developed manufacturing industries are the petrochemical industry and machine building. The truck manufacturer KamAZ is the largest company in the region and employs approximately one fifth of Tatarstan's workforce. Kazanorgsintez, based in Kazan, is one of the largest chemical companies in Russia. [57] The Tatarstan aviation industry produces Tu-214 passenger planes and helicopters. The Kazan helicopter plant is one of the largest helicopter manufacturers in the world. Engineering, textiles, clothing, wood processing and food industries are also of key importance in Tatarstan.

Relevant news:

Moscow, Aug. 6 (EFE) .- Tatarstan, the republic with the highest quotas for autonomy in the Russian Federation, has become a "hot potato" for the head of the Kremlin, Vladimir Putin, asking for the signing of a new treaty of Power sharing with Moscow.

The Tartars, the country's second ethnic group after the Russians, are based on the Constitution approved in 1992 and that leaves the door open to self-determination by giving priority to regional legislation over federal.

The current treaty expired last month and the World Congress of the Tartars (CMT) already asked Putin for renewal in June, something that the Kremlin does not seem in a hurry to do, which begins to disturb that ethnic group of Muslim creed.

According to the newspaper "Kommersant", the Kremlin considers that this treaty is obsolete, arguing that a federal state cannot be built on the basis of treaties with its members.

With the exception of some members of the Islamist organization Hizb-ut-Tahrir detained for extremist activities in the republic, the Tartars have never followed the Chechen path, but their national and cultural identity is deeply rooted.

The head of the executive committee of the CMT, Rinat Zakírov, said this week that this request is not a passing whim, but the will of the majority of the inhabitants of the republic, located in the middle course of the Volga River and where around 40 per One hundred of the population is Russian.

He recalled that in 1992, just after the Soviet disintegration, more than 60 percent of the Tartars voted in a referendum that their republic is a sovereign state and subject to international law.

They are not limited to that, but they want to continue maintaining the figure of the president of the republic, something that ceased to exist in the rest of the federated entities in 2016 and that the Kremlin does not see with good eyes either.

The first Tatar president, Mintimer Shaimyev, a politician with great moral authority in Russia, recalled that in 1994 he signed his first treaty with Moscow - when Boris Yeltsin led the Kremlin - in the framework of the federalization process of the heir country of the USSR .

"This treaty decided the fate of the country. It was like crossing a bridge over hell. Over time, leaders, politicians and experts have valued the treaty on the distribution of powers between Russia and Tatarstan as one of the main factors for maintaining integrity. of the Russian state, " he said.

With Putin in power, Tatarstan signed a new agreement with Russia in 2007 that has allowed some legal discrepancies to be filed, but has not eliminated all the contradictions between the local and central constitutions, he said.

Be that as it may, he was convinced that both sides will find a "common language", since the Tartars are the first interested in a "strong Russia", which will allow their international recognition as a federated state.

"Even in the most difficult periods we defend Russia's economic strengthening and support those statements with our work," he said.

However, its critics consider that Tatar exclusivity creates a dangerous precedent, as some people see it as a comparative grievance and others as an example to follow in the future.

In addition, it goes against Putin's attempts to quell once and for all the separatist ardor that it took so much effort to put out in the Caucasus, especially Chechnya, where two bloody wars were fought for that reason. 

Putin, who always claims to have avoided a second secessionist wave in the country with his coming to power, maintains that Russia's strength lies in its unity within the framework of a State with the Russian language as a link.

Analysts still do not consider it a problem, but believe that if the Kremlin is adamant the reaction of the Tartars, more than five million spread throughout the country, can be very negative in the face of the presidential elections in March 2018.

Tatarstan, where the local ethnic group dominates all the springs of political and economic power, although Muslims and Christians live together in peace, it is one of the most developed regions of the country thanks to hydrocarbons, while Kazan is considered the third Russian capital after Moscow and San Petersburg

The demand of the Tartars is not so much political or economic as identitarian and is an attempt to counteract Russian religious, cultural and linguistic assimilation.

In fact, among the demands that were heard in the Congress that meets every five years was the fact that Tartarus is considered an official language by the Constitution as well as Russian, as is the case in other federal states. EFE (Ignacio Ortega)

References:

https://www.lavanguardia.com/politica/20170806/43401695588/tatarstan-una-patata-caliente-para-putin.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tatarstan