Tuesday, January 31, 2012

1935 Japan Tatars


Rukia Starkow Akchurin,fourth from the left with the very stylish hat on. In front of her is her younger brother, Mahmut Starkow. To the right is Maksura Altis Akchurin and to her right is Rabiye, who passed away when she was only 19 or 20.

Our uncle Hayrullah in the white "English driving cap" above the kid with the bowlcut.

Japanese Bumper Cars

We don't know if this is our father or not but it's a...
Tatar Infant on a Japanese Bumper Car!

Tatar Japan 1926

Our Family Home - Museum

We were told that our family home in Kobe, Japan has become a museum due to it being the first (or one of the first) western style homes in the city.

Tatar School Japan 1933


click on image >> right click View Image >> + to expand.

Tatars in Japan 1935

Tatar Japan 1935


Some of the old family photographs of Hayrullah Absi are the best. Here he is in school in Japan. How did they treat him being the sole non-Japanese in the class? Did the discipline of Japanese life influence his decision to become a career tank commander in the Turkish military? He is second row from the top, in the center.

Monday, January 30, 2012

Saniye Apa



We love this song and jumped with joy when we noticed that someone had put this together.

from youtube user luterikis

Sunday, January 22, 2012

Volga Republics - Tatarstan

There are several ethnic republics in the Volga region, the most militant of which is Tatarstan The Tatars, with 3.75 percent of the population, are the largest minority ethnic group in Russia. They make up just under half of Tatarstan's population, although only a quarter of all Russia's Tatars live in the republic. Located about 500 miles (805km) from Moscow, Tatarstan is a vital territorial link holding Russia together. Major roads, railroads, and oil pipelines all cross its territory.

Ivan the Terrible conquered the Tatars and their capitol of Kazan in 1552, and, over the next 440 years, they became the most Russified of the former Soviet Union's Muslim Turkic-speaking peoples. In fact, there was considerable intermarriage between Tatars and Russians. Yet in the early 1990's, a powerful national revival emerged in Tatarstan. Early in 1992,it refused, along with the republic of Chechnya, to sign Yeltsin's Federal Treaty that was designed to maintain Russian unity while permitting some local autonomy. In 1993, after adopting its own constitution Tatarstan declared itself a "sovereign state". At the same time, it stopped short of declaring its independence. In 1994 Moscow and Kazan worked out a compromise that appears to be working. Tatarstan won broad authority, including some power over taxes and its natural resources. After the 1994 agreement, it increasingly was drawn into the orbit of the overall Russian economy. Most of the republic's people seemed to agree that Tatarstan's stability and prosperity are inseparable from remaining a part of the broader Russian economy.

At the same time some developments in Tatarstan continued to worry the Kemlin. In 2000, Tatarstan adopted a law calling for the Tatar language to be written in the Latin alphabet instead of the Cyrillic alphabet used to write Russian and other Slavic languages. The law called for the process to take place over a decade, a beginning with written work in the public schools. This clearly was a step to assert cultural independence and Russian authorities worried it might feed secessionist sentiment that had bubbled up in the early 1990's. President Putin's response came in December 2002, when he signed a federal law making Cyrillic the compulsory alphabet for languages across Russia. The law contained a clause that provided for exceptions under limited circumstances, but it also left no doubt that Moscow intended to keep Tatarstan snugly within the Russian Federation.

from Russia by Michael Kort 2004

Russian Expansion and Colonialism


from Russia by Michael Kort 2004

Friday, January 20, 2012

Nellie Kim - Montreal 1976

Nellie Kim - 1976 Montreal and her Mom is Tatar and named Alfiya.
She scored three gold medals in Gymnastics.


Nellie Vladimirovna Kim (Russian: Нелли Владимировна Ким; born 29 July 1957) is a retired Soviet gymnast who won three gold medals and a silver medal at the 1976 Summer Olympics in Montreal, and two gold medals at the 1980 Summer Olympics. She was the first woman in Olympic history to earn a perfect 10 score on the vault and the first to earn it on the floor exercise





her official website here

Sunday, January 15, 2012

Edren Dingez - Adriatic Sea

Ilham Shakirov
Ильхам Шакиров


Ilshat Veliev


Mubai



Renat Ibragimov



Azat Sound System

Soyumbike


Sümbike, Kazan şehrinin ilk ve son Hanbikesi "Syumbike'nin Dansı" Anastasiya Buzuneyeva 2010
Бузунеева Анастасия. "танец Сююмбике". холст/масло 60см x 80см
2010 г

Saturday, January 14, 2012

Ed & Ivet - A World War II POW Romance


Synopsis:

During World War II there were hundreds of camps that housed American prisoners of war throughout Japan. Every surviving prisoner and their families had amazing stories to tell. Ed and Ivet Bacon were no different-and yet their story is unique. Ed was an American civilian
employed by a large construction firm that was building a naval base in Guam in 1941 just prior to being taken prisoner after the attack on Pearl Harbor. Ivet was the daughter of Mishar Tatars who'd fled the Russian civil war at the turn of the century and had immigrated east, finally settling in a European neighborhood of Kobe, Japan. Love Takes A Prisoner is the true story of how fate brought these two individuals together and how their families and their past played a role in a far reaching love affair which began in the early stages of the war up through Kobe's most horrifying air raids of 1945 and culminated in a triple wedding. This is a powerful story of how two people from different worlds fell in love and despite the hunger, deprivation, and desperation of war would not forsake the nearly impossible dream of being together no matter what the consequences

We ran across this on Abebooks.com.

Monday, January 9, 2012

Damira Sayitova - Ezledem Tabalmadim



Дамира Саетова - "Эзлэдем- табалмадым"
Damira Sayitova - "I searched Could not find"