Comparing The Genetic Claim To The Crimean Peninsula

There has been plenty of debate about who has the genetic claim to the Crimean Peninsula, and it is these debates that portray the conflict between the Crimean Tatars and the Russians. Vladimir Putin’s Russia has claimed that the Crimea peninsula has always been Russian soil, as the Russian people have always lived there. The Kremlin further claimed that the Crimean Tatars were just a group of settlers of Turkic origin, and thus they had no genetic claim to the land. In essence, they were considered something akin to squatters (Goble). These claims have been refuted by historians and Russians alike, but now even more evidence, this time genetic evidence, has been provided to show that the Crimean Tatars have the genetic claim to the land, not the Russians. If the genetic data from the Crimean Tatars showed a large percentage …show more content…
From the results of her DNA test, Dr. Bowman discovered the following DNA breakdown that she possessed: “28 percent from Northern Asian peoples, 22 percent from Northern European ones, 20 percent from Southwest Asian and Mediterranean ones each, seven percent from Southeast Asians, and two percent from Native Americans” (Goble). What are truly important to note from these results in these debates over the claim of the Crimean peninsula is the larger percentages. These percentages show that she, and Crimean Tatars in general, are not solely from the Turkic region in origin. From this data, Dr. Bowman understood that “they are the descendants of the people who moved to Crimea from different directions: Scythians, Goths, Byzantine Greeks, Genovese, and Turkic groups such as Khazars, Kipchaks, Tatars and Ottoman Turks” (Goble). With this being the case, then it shows that the Crimean Tatar descends from the settlers from all over that settled into the