as they conceived of their migration as a "hijra" similar to the prophet's temporary retreat to Medina under the pressure from enemies of Islam. The outflow of the Crimean Tatars turned into an exodus after the Crimean War (1854–1856), as the Russian government began to treat the Crimean Tatars as internal threats to its security because of their historical relations with the Ottoman Empire. The majority of the Crimean Tatar immigrants were settled in the Dobruja region of the Balkans by the Ottoman authorities, but some were directed to various parts of Anatolia, where significant numbers of Crimean Tatars perished due to changes in environmental and climate conditions. Although there were Crimean Tatars who emigrated from the mountainous, coastal, and urban parts of the Crimea among them, the majority of the emigrants were from the steppes of Crimea and its surroundings, who lived largely in closed peasant communities. According to ancient Crimean Tatar traditions, marriage between relatives (e.g. cousins), even very distant ones, has always been strictly prohibited, unlike the local population of Anatolia. The ones who lived in a concentrated manner in adjacent villages, such as the ones around Eskişehir region, were able to maintain their ethnic identity and language intact almost up until the 1970s. The Crimean Tatar diaspora identity emerged over this period in the form of predominantly oral cultural traditions in stories, songs, poems, myths, and legends about the loss of the "homeland" and the miseries of immigration. An excerpt from Crimean Tatar exile literature is as follows: The angry and wild Black Sea roared, Rushed to extinguish my burning motherland. The old Çatırdağ, distressed and worried, "Where are the Tatars going?" she cried. Eskender Fazıl, from his poem Stand Up The end of the Ottoman Empire and the creation of modern Turkey With the shrinking of the Ottoman Empire in the last quarter of the 19th century, once again the majority of the Crimean Tatars in Dobrudja migrated to Anatolia, and sometimes re-migrated several times more within Anatolia. This pattern of immigration contributed to the severing of kinship ties, and hence ties to the homeland, amalgamating the previously more segregated sub-groups of Crimean Tatars. The Crimean Tatars participated in the building of the new Turkish Republic, as well as the formation of the core Turkish identity. People of Crimean Tatar descent in Turkey number around 1 million. A small number of Crimean Tatar refugees from