Inci Bowman comes to the Gasprinsky Library

Inci Bowman with Crimea Rada Deputy Cafure Kadzhametova and Gulnara Yayaeva, Library Director.

On the afternoon of October 13th, the Gasprinsky Library was honored with a visit from Inci Bowman from the United States. Inci Bowman is past president of the International Committee on Crimea (ICC). Through her writings on the ICC website and the ICC list serve, Inci Bowman has for me become the voice of the Crimean Tatar diaspora in the United States. I attribute much of what I know about the Crimean Tatar people to her informative and elegant writing. I had looked forward to meeting her and was disappointed we did not have more time together, but I was happy to put a face with the writings that have so enriched my life these past two years.
Dr. Bowman was in Simferopol as a guest speaker at an international conference on the history of women in Crimea dedicated to the 125th anniversary of the birth of Sefiki Gasprinsky, the daughter of Ismail Gasprinsky. Dr. Bowman was born in Istanbul and speaks fluent Turkish. She is a retired professor of medical history from the University of Texas and currently lives in Washington, DC.

A word about the International Committee on Crimea taken from their website:
The International Committee for Crimea (ICC) is a group of people interested in raising awareness about the historical, cultural, and socio-political aspects of the Crimean Tatars in their native land as well as in Diaspora. They are descendants of Crimean Tatars living in diaspora, Tatars who have returned to Crimea after almost forty-seven years of forced exile, and friends and allies of Crimean Tatars. Our members live in the U.S.A, Turkey, Germany, Holland, and Ukraine.
The ICC provides a platform where dedicated and active Crimean Tatars and friends of Tatars can meet and share information, ideas, and experiences. Through Crimea-L, an Internet discussion group, and this Web site, the ICC aims to create and maintain a network of Crimean Tatars and friends of Tatars in different parts of the world.
We believe that Crimean Tatars, who were unjustly deported en masse from their homeland by Soviet authorities on 18 May 1944, have the right to live in their homeland in peace, free of social and economic prejudices against them. We look forward to the day when Crimean Tatars are recognized as people with a history and culture who inhabited the Crimean peninsula for centuries.