Timur Şahmurad oğlu Daĝcı (Crimean Tatar Cyrillic: Тимур Шахмурад огълу Дагъджы, , romanized as Timur Shakhmuradovich Dagdzhi; 19 May 1932 – 5 February 2022) was a Crimean Tatar journalist and newspaper editor. In his youth he was involved in the
Crimean Tatar rights movement, but later became active in the
Communist Party and actively promoted the
Mubarek resettlement scheme intended to resettle Crimean Tatars in the Uzbek desert.
Biography
Daĝcı was born to a
Crimean Tatar family on 19 May 1932; at the age of fifteen he began working as a car mechanic.
Although he graduated from evening school, he initially could not get accepted into journalism school since he was Crimean Tatar.
However, he managed to get into the Oriental Faculty of Tashkent University. He started a journalism career in 1956, originally working for a local newspaper in Samarkand but later moved to Tashkent to work on projects in the Crimean Tatar language. He became active in the national movement in 1964,
and in 1966 he was arrested for "inciting national discord." He was imprisoned in
Lefortovo Prison. According to his accounts, during interrogation, he was very strategic in his responses, avoiding implicating other Crimean Tatars while frequently quoting Marx and Lenin in response to interrogator questions and never capitulated to the interrogators, while Dzhemilev says that he capitulated.
After being released from prison he worked in journalism, and from 1982 to 1985 he was the head editor of the newspaper
Lenin Bayrağı
''Yani dyunya'' () is a Crimean Tatar-language weekly newspaper, published in Simferopol. Its history dates back to 1918, when it was established in Moscow. In 2015, the newspaper was merged with the magazine ''Yildiz''.
History
The newspaper ...
. Deviating from the opinions of other Crimean Tatars, he supported the
Mubarek zone scheme for rooting Crimean Tatars in the Uzbek desert instead of returning to Crimea, so he sent his son to live there as an example for other Crimean Tatars and did a lot of work for the Communist Party. He was very critical of the
Dzhemilev faction of the Crimean Tatar rights movement. Nevertheless, he was very critical of the Soviet state for
denying the existence of Crimean Tatars as a distinct ethnic group, which he described as genocidal in his memoirs. Despite his support for the failed Mubarek project that encouraged Crimean Tatars to stay in Uzbekistan, he moved to his homeland Crimea in 1989.
See also
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Şamil Alâdin
Şamil Alâdin (, , sometimes in English also ''Shamil Aladin''; 12 July 1912 – 21 May 1996) was a Crimean Tatar writer, poet, translator, and civil rights activist. Early in his career he wrote poetry, later moving on to prose and nonfiction wo ...
*
Nazim Osmanov
Footnotes
References
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Dagci, Timur
1932 births
2022 deaths
Crimean Tatar writers