My Grandfather had a strong military bearing. I was a bit of a radical. Back in my AF days us sky jockeys were not very well noted for following Military protocol. It was only on very rare occasions I ever even wore a uniform. I almost got court martialed over that, but that is another story.
Getting back to the Tatars. I beleive most including even those of us who are only part Tatar would love to seen an independent Tatar Nation in either the Baltic refion or Southern Russia. Seperate from the Russians, but on peaceful terms with them.
Language wise there is a difference between the Tatars of Tatarstan and the Lipkas of the Baltic regions, but the ancient heritage is the same. I believe the Lipkas used the Arabic alphabet longer then the people of Tatarstan did if the people of Tatarstan ever did use it. If I Recall Lithuania used the Arabic Alphabet from the 1200s till the mid 1700s and then briefly used the Roman alphabet finaly adopting the Cyrillic (Russian) Alphabet, which most Lithuanians still use.

Tatarstan Tatars used the Arabic script from 922 AD (officially, in fact, a little bit earlier) till 1920s (i.e. 1000 years!), then the Latin Alphabet for 10 years, and then the Russian Alphabet + 6 additional letters. In 1990s Tatars decided to restore the Latin Alphabet (it has many similarities with Turkish), officially it should be in 2001, but Russian government passed a law forbidding using any other alphabets for all nations, which live in Russian Federation, except the Cyrillic (Russian) alphabet. Otherwise, the national minorities will not be allowed to use their language as official in their national regions and republics. Tatar is official language in Tatarstan, everybody studies it at school, all documents are in Tatar and in Russian, so if Tatars change their alphabet now, they won't be able to use their language for official purposes and in education. Nevertheless, many sites in the Internet use both scripts now, or even only the Latin script...
for example, http://kitapxane.noka.ru/ - Web-library of Tatar literature
