In Istanbul.
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The Crimean Tatar Association occupies all floors of an old building in Fatih, on Istanbul's historic peninsula.
Here, Celal Içten is at home, in the neighborhood where he was born, in the office where he piles up his books and memories, and his jars of gray clay.
"
It's from the land of Bagarrai, my homeland
," explains the 67-year-old man to whom his glasses, his round cheeks and his big mustache give the air of a friendly grandfather.
This Crimean land, he went to dig it himself, “
to pour it into my shroud and the shroud of those who could not return there, or returned there but never found their loved ones.
When he speaks of his homeland, Celal Içten speaks of his family - of his grandfather who fled Bagarrai for Istanbul "
in a cradle around the 1870s
" - and of today's Crimea, annexed for eight years by Vladimir Putin's Russia.
In both cases, the grandfather sobbed like a child.
Our goal has always been to restore a Tatar majority in Crimea, to ensure that the Tatars live on their land.
But the war leaves us no choice
Celal Içten, a Tatar immigrant to Istanbul
Celal is Tatar, named after a people…
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