Crimean Tatars   ...... Crimean Tatars – a Turkic people - dominated the population of the peninsula when it was a vassal state of the Ottoman Empire in the middle ages. As more and more ethnic Russians were given land in the temperate and picturesque land, the proportion of Tatars gradually declined. In the last census conducted before war broke out with Germany, one in five Crimeans – just over 200 thousand – put down Tatar as their nationality. Crimea was taken by Nazi troops early on during World War II after a series of particularly brutal battles, and remained under German control until May 1944. Directives from the NKVD – Stalin’s secret police – dated to earlier that year show that the Tatars were viewed as untrustworthy. More than 20 thousand were accused of deserting from the Red Army in the first months of the war. The Nazis in Crimea also set up a special ethnic Tatar local administration to run parts of the peninsula – a tactic often used with other minorities on Soviet territory. .....  by "Russia Today" News....