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European russian pan-turkish flag

Idel Ural

Last modified: 2007-04-14 by antónio martins
Keywords: independentist | pan-turkish | idel ural | crescent: points to upper fly (white) | volga | ural | star: 5 points (white) |
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Idel Ural flag
image by Ralf Stelter and António Martins, Jul 1999

See also:

Origin and meaning of the flag

This is the flag of the Tatar Public Center, led by Matar Mulukov. In May and June 1991 it was hoisted on the [Tatar] government building, but I do not know by whom. The star and crescent are as in the flag of Pakistan.
Ralf Stelter, 04 Mar 1999

In the seat of the indepedentist movement (it wants Tatarstan to be independent from Russia), I saw the it’s flag. It is divided into two equal triangles by the top-left-to-right-bottom diagonal: the upper triangle is red and the lower triangle is green. In the center of the flag there are a white crescent halfmoon with a white star, the same symbols of Turkey’s flag. In the seat there were two other flags: the Turkey’s one and the Turkish Northern Cyprian Republic.
Giuseppe Bottasini

This photograph, taken from the book Den Gottlosen die Hälle (The godless belong to hell) by Peter Scholl-Latour (publ. Bertelsmann), shows the author at the Tatar Public Center; on the table three flags, Soviet Union, Tatar Public Center, and Islamic Tatars (flag with white crescent and star of Islam with the Inscription "Allah akbar" in the upper fly, flown by "normal" people). Note that on this photo the flag of the Tatar Public Center is attached wrongly with the fly end to the mast. In the background you see the flag correctly attached to the wall. In the same tv-series these flags could be seen flying. Proportions varied from nearly square to 1:2, and I think it is a matter of manufacturing not a matter of which region flies the flag. As the T.C.P. flag was planned to be the new national flag I believe it spread out wide amongst the Tatars, so it could have developed to a kind of ethnic flag.
Ralf Stelter, 10 May 1999 and 25 Jul 1999

The flag was not designed with the colours of the national flag of Tatarstan, but the other way: the national flag’s colours are from this flag.
Ralf Stelter, 04 Mar 1999

I’m under the impression that the diagonal red green Idel-Ural flag with crescent and star is a recent creation, proposed by the Tatar Public Center in the early 1990ies.
António Martins, 01 May 2000

This flag was later recognized by Tatarstan Constitution as the flag of the Turkish peoples of Idel-Ural (Tatarstan, Chuvachia and Bashkiria).
Jaume Ollé, 21 Oct 1997

"Idel" ("Ătal", in chuvash), by the way, means "Volga" in a number of turkic languages, and this flag supposedly stands for the turkic peoples of this area — Tatars, Chuvash and Bashkir. I can though guarantee that it has no currency whatsoever here in Chuvashia (meaning that I haven’t seen it in my 20 months here, and I do look for flags). I wouldn’t be suprised to learn that it is used in Tataria, and perhaps also in Bashkiria, though.
António Martins, 01 May 2000

The green-red flag with the crescent moon and star can be used by Tatars and Bashkirs only as they are Muslims. Chuvashes (Bolgars) are also Turkic, but profess Orthodox Christianity as does a group of Finno-Ugric nations which joined Idel-Ural State in 1918.
Chris Kretowicz, 02 Jun 2001


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