Ankara / Anadolu

Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan met with the national leader of the Crimean Tatars, Ukrainian parliament member Mustafa Qırımoğlu, and the head of the National Assembly of Crimean Tatars, Refat Chubarov.

This took place during the Turkish minister's visit to Ukraine.

Photo: Mustafa Hatipoğlu/AA

Diplomatic sources told Anadolu that the Turkish foreign minister met with Qırımoğlu and Chubarov in the capital Kyiv on the sidelines of an official visit to Ukraine.

The sources did not provide details about the meeting.

The Crimean Tatars belong to a Turkish ethnic group that considers the peninsula their ancestral homeland. They were subjected to forced deportations to central Russia, Siberia, and Turkic-speaking Central Asian countries under Soviet rule.

After a unilateral referendum on March 16, 2014, Russia annexed Ukraine's Crimean peninsula, which was not recognized by the international community, and was followed by sanctions against Moscow by the European Union, the United States, and a number of countries.