🌍 Musings by Noah ✍️

Human migration is woven deep into the fabric of humanity. Although Turkic culture is not indigenous to Europe, the Turkic peoples that call Europe home have left an enduring linguistic and cultural legacy. One such nation lies in Southern Moldova and is called Gagauzia. Known as Gagauz Yeri in Gagauz, or Găgăuzia in Romanian and Moldovan, this small (1,832 sq km / 707 sq mi) region is home to the Gagauz people.

History has no conclusive origin story for the Gagauz people. In the 20th century, a Bulgarian historian collected 19 separate origin stories for the nation. A few years later, a Gagauz ethnologist raised this to 21. Interestingly, where most Turkic nations practice Islam as a religion, the Gagauz practice Eastern Orthodox Christianity. This tradition goes back centuries, with folklore teaching us that the Gagauz were proud defenders of Eastern Orthodoxy within the Byzantine Empire.

Lying within the borders of the Republic of Moldova, Gagauzia (officially the Autonomous Territorial Unit of Gagauzia) is an autonomous municipality within the region of Eastern Europe. The Gagauz people are believed to be around 300,000 in size. Most Gagauz live within Gagauzia, but healthy diaspora communities exist in Ukraine, Turkey, and Russia.

Although Gagauz origins remain unclear, the nation might have existed prior to Ottoman colonization of the Balkans in the 14th century. In 1812, the region of Bessarabia (modern day Moldova and part of Ukraine) was annexed by the Russian empire. With the exception of 6 days in 1906, when the Gagauz led a revolution against Russia, the Gagauz have always remained a minority within a larger state. After the Soviet conquest of Moldova in the 1940s, an intellectual Gagauz national movement flourished in the 1980s. By 1988, the Gagauz came together with other ethnic minorities and founded a democratic assembly which voted in favor of autonomy within the Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic. The city of Comrat was chosen to be its capital.

By 1991 the Soviet Union was crumbling. Although many Gagauz wished to remain part of the Soviet bloc, the Moldovan parliament voted to secede from the USSR on 27 August, 1991. In this moment Moldova was a fledging democracy and parliament opted to work closely with its ethnic minorities in an effort to strengthen its independence. By 1994 the Moldovan assembly passed the "Law on the Special Legal Status of Gagauzia", solidifying the Gagauz autonomous territory within the Republic of Moldova. The Gagauzian "national-territorial autonomous unit" was soon created and ratified three official languages: Gagauz, Romanian (Moldovan), and Russian.

Gagauzia soldiered on as Moldova labored to create a new post-Soviet identity. By 2014, Gagauzia held a referendum to determine whether it wanted stronger ties with the Russian Federation or the European Union. The constituency voted overwhelmingly in favor of creating closer ties Russia.

The language spoken by the Gagauz people is part of the Oghuz branch of Turkic languages, making it closely related to Turkish, Qashqai, Turkmen, and Azeri. It was first written in the Greek alphabet in the late 1800s, and in 1957, under Sovietization, the language adopted the Cyrillic alphabet. After Moldovan independence, the Latin-based alphabet was adopted in 1993, having been largely inspired by the modern Turkish alphabet.

Despite its small size, Gagauzia is a culturally rich part of Europe, with its own linguistic heritage in a region that is largely Slavic and Romance. Withstanding larger forces, it has forged an identity that remains similar yet largely distinct from its peers, having emerged at the crossroads of West Asia and Eastern Europe. The nation shares a long, deep history with Moldova, yet has managed to not only survive, but exert its independence throughout centuries. Whatever the future holds for this small nation, it is a place I enjoy learning about and I hope to one day visit.

Hello and welcome to altun.cc, my private space on the Internet for my rants, raves, ramblings, and musings on the social sciences, art, and software. My name is Noah, but you might know me as naltun or arav.

I work professionally as a software engineer, but my interests are vast. I do digital rights and free software advocacy, and my tech specialties include cloud development and cybersecurity. My non-tech interests include anthropology, geography, linguistics, art, and music.

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