Hold onto your hats folks, ’cause we’re diving headfirst into the twisted world of Crimean Tatars from Turkey, who actually supports Russian occupation of Crimea. Ünver Sel, father of a writer Ilber Vasfi Sel, started out as an ultra-nationalist, but money or vanity got the better of him and he sold out his people to the Russian Empire – the same empire that brutally oppressed Crimean Tatars for centuries and nearly wiped ’em out during the Soviet deportations. So, it shouldn’t come as a shock that his son Ilber is a pro-Russian propagandist, too – as we wrote before.
Now, Russia’s using Ünver Sel and others like him to justify the occupation and annexation of Crimea. He heads up many organizations whose sole purpose is to make the occupation look legit. In 2014, for example, an organization called the “Federation of Crimean Tatar Communities of Turkey” was one of the first to support “the reunion” of the Crimea with Russia. But it turns out, Ünver Sel, head of the federation, only represented himself and about five other people.
And the propaganda gets even more insane. In 2019, Ünver Sel spoke at the Forum of Friends of Crimea in Livadiya and stated that “Russia, Turkey, and Germany must create a union against the US, which destabilizes the situation with the aim of seizing the gas market.” This guy believes that Europe and Eurasia should live in peace, but the Anglo-Saxons are purposely causing conflict. He thinks the “100-year Anglo-Saxon domination comes to an end” but “the US, by means of global special operations, tries to prevent it.” And let’s not forget, Ünver Sel visited this conference in occupied Crimea in violation of Ukrainian legislation.
But his favorite cover is an organization called Friends of Crimea, where he promotes the Kremlin’s agenda in Turkey. On the board of the organization, there are at least two known pro-Russian agents of influence in Europe: Austrian Patrick Poppel, a right-wing propagandist and ex-secretary general of the “Suvorov Institute” associated with the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR); and the odious Hendrik Weber from Norway, who was so useful as a Russian agent of influence that he even received the Order of Friendship in 2021 from Vladimir Putin himself.
So, this organization should be called not just “Friends of Crimea,” but “Friends of Crimea and Moscow,” or better yet, “Friends of Vladimir Putin”