ISTANBUL

The Polish parliament recognized the 1944 deportation of Ukraine’s Crimean Tatars as an act of “genocide” against the Crimean Tatar people, local media reported on Friday.

According to Ukrainska Pravda online, the Sejm, the lower house of the Polish parliament, approved "a resolution to perpetuate the memory of the victims of genocide against the Crimean Tatar people.”

The resolution passed overwhelmingly 414-16, with two abstentions.

The resolution said that on the morning of May 18, 1944, authorities of the Soviet Union began deporting Crimean Tatars from the Crimean Peninsula, forcibly relocating about 200,000 people to Central Asia and Siberia in just three days.

The deportation of Crimean Tatars from Crimea in 1944 was an act of genocide against the Crimean Tatar people, it said.

Polish lawmakers also said Russia's 2014 annexation of Crimea was a “gross violation” of the principle of territorial integrity, international law, and the UN Charter. The illegal annexation has also been condemned by the UN General Assembly, the European Union, and Türkiye.

Poland became the fifth country to recognize the Crimean Tatar Exile as genocide.

Canada, Ukraine, Latvia, and Lithuania have recognized the Crimean Tatar deportation as genocide.

On May 18, 1944, tens of thousands of Crimean Tatars were deported to Central Asia by Joseph Stalin’s Soviet regime, which accused them of collaborating with occupying Nazi forces.

The Crimean Tatars were deported to various regions within the Soviet territories, in particular Siberia and Uzbekistan. Almost half of the exiles, who endured long months of dire living conditions, are thought to have died of starvation and disease.

The Circassians, a predominantly Muslim people, suffered greatly under the Russians and were subjected to ethnic cleansing.

A war in 1864 near the Black Sea port city of Sochi resulted in defeat for the Circassians and saw the Russian Empire invade all of Caucasia, a region extending east from the eastern Black Sea to the Caspian Sea.

In a plight similar to that of the Crimean Tatars, nearly 1.5 million Circassians were expelled from the region to east of the Black Sea when it was overrun by Russia in 1864. Up to half a million are believed to have died.

Most of the Circassian exiles were absorbed into the Ottoman Empire, settling as far away as present-day Jordan.

*Writing by Merve Berker