Emine Dzheppar at TEDx (VIDEO)

"I am a Ukrainian diplomat, a Crimean Tatar, a mother of two beautiful daughters..."

 First Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine, former Crimean Tatar journalist Emine Dzheppar spoke at the famous TEDx conference in Athens.

"I am a Ukrainian diplomat, an ethnic Crimean Tatar, and a mother of two beautiful daughters..." Dzheppar began her speech with these words.

Emine Dzhepparova (Crim. Emine Dzheppar) is a Ukrainian Crimean Tatar politician and statesman, from 2011 to 2014 she was a journalist at ATR, Krym.Realii and Radio Freedom, from 2016 to 2019 she served as the first deputy minister of information policy of Ukraineö and since 2020, Dzheppar has been the first deputy minister of foreign affairs, as well as the head of the National Commission of Ukraine for UNESCO.

At the TEDx conference, the diplomat talked about Russia's occupation of Crimea in 2014 and the full-scale Russian-Ukrainian war. The main topic of the speech was the personal history of the family that survived Stalin's exile, return to their homeland in Crimea, and Russian occupation.

"Today I am not here as an official, but as a person. In order to share my pain, my trauma, to share my personal experience, my reflection on the war."

"This is the story of a Crimean Tatar child who was born in exile far from its native Crimea. This is the story of an adult who had to leave the Crimean peninsula again due to the occupation of 2014 and is now fighting to return. This is a story about finding a home, a story about losing a home.”