Alexei Klyashtorny
Deputy Director of the Youth Policy
Department of the Ministry of Family,
Youth and Sports of Ukraine

Ethnical factor in Ukraine and terrorist threat

I am representing the institution which is not associated with the fight against terrorism as its direct responsibilities. At the same time, if we look at a typical image of a terrorist we can see that this is a young man. Firstly, the way of terrorism is chosen by young people in any country in all historical periods. Secondly, terrorist die in the young age, as a rule. That’s why it seems logical that our ministry is at the forefront of the fight against terrorism and namely fighting premises and origins of terrorism. I have to say that now I am not authorized to represent official position of the Ministry mainly because of two reasons. We would have to go through many procedures to work out some political document. That document would be very politically correct and thus less informative for the audience.

Thirdly, I will rely on more traditional schemes in my analysis. I will not turn to a popular scheme saying that the presence of cultural and religious differences can provide psychological background for confrontation. When some social and organizational notion is analyzed the first step to do is to analyze its social background and only then ideological premises and grounds and, finally, its organizational structure.

Our Ministry deals with social and ideological background of terrorism. Unfortunately, in our society we can hear more insistent voices warning about the oncoming terrorist threat. This is due not only to reports of mass media, but also the increased level of political confrontation based on ethnical and cultural reasons. If we already have this situation there is a possibility that one day confrontation will expand into more violent actions. If to speak about three threats of ethnical terrorism I would recall Russian ethnical terrorism in the first place, secondly, goes Ukrainian and finally Crimean Tatar. Among us – Crimean Tatars – there are no terrorists, although we have been suspected in terrorist activities for 15 years already. Potentially this threat exists, but there are factors which prevent terrorism among Crimean Tatars. At the Ministry of Youth we are exactly trying to deprive terrorism of possible social support. This is, of course, marginalization of Crimean Tatars especially young people. It occurred that when Crimean Tatars were forced to move to Middle Asia they had had a higher cultural level than the majority of local population in Uzbekistan.

They were educated and elite part of population of republics of the Middle Asia. Contemporary young Crimean Tatars leg behind their parents in terms of cultural and educational development. Accompanied by a certain psychological situation these factors promote marginalization of Crimean Tatars. Political side is also important in this issue as it supports Crimean Tatars creating integration opportunities for this nationality to interact well within Ukrainian society. Modern political elite of Crimean Tatars are our allies, especially Medzhelis and Turkey, no matter how weird it may sound. Turkey is heading towards Europe and Tatars are trying to follow this example. Also I would like to say a couple of words about radicalization on ethnical grounds happening at present in Ukraine which mainly circulates around language issues – Russian and Ukrainian speaking population. This process is kindled by certain political forces. Recent events showed that (for example blocking a port in Crimea by political forces) the degree of tension increases which leads to greater radicalization and potentially to terrorist violent actions. In this respect we will pursue the policy of tolerance between Russian and Ukrainian speaking young people in our country.