Crimea's Tatars have voted to push for self-rule in their historic homeland following its annexation by Russia, but remain torn on how to engage with the new authorities.
Ethnic Tatars from all over Crimea convened in the town of Bakhchysarai for an emergency Qurultai, or congress, to decide on the fate of the community of about 300,000 people on the Black Sea peninsula.
'There comes a moment in the life of every people when a choice must be made that will determine its future,' said Tatar leader Refat Chubarov.
The Tatars, which make up about 12 per cent of Crimea's population, strongly opposed and largely boycotted the hastily-organised March 16 referendum that resulted in the peninsula splitting from Ukraine.
Chubarov said that if Russians in Crimea were given the chance to determine their future, all those involved 'have to proceed from the premise that the Crimean Tatars also have this right'.
Suspicion of Moscow is high among the community, who were deported en masse by Soviet leader Joseph Stalin to central Asia during World War II and only started returning home in the late 1980s.
After hours of debate the delegates voted to 'launch political and legal procedures (for the) ethnic and territorial autonomy of the Crimean Tatar people on their historical territory, Crimea'.
However it was not immediately clear how they planned to go about this or whether they sought to become an autonomous entity in Ukraine, or Russia.
'This land is the Crimea, the motherland of the Crimean Tatars,' said Grand Mufti Ravil Gainutdin to huge applause from more than 200 people attending the congress.
There was no immediate reaction from the Crimean authorities.
On Saturday, the local authorities led by prime minister Sergei Aksyonov hosted the leader of Russia's majority-Muslim region of Tatarstan, in a sign the fate of the peninsula's Tatars was high on the agenda.
