The Gagauz (; ) are an Oghuz Turkic ethnic group native to southern Moldova (Gagauzia, Taraclia District, Basarabeasca District) and southwestern Ukraine (Budjak). Gagauz are mostly Eastern Orthodox Christians. The term Gagauz is also often used as a collective naming of Turkic people living in the Balkans, speaking the Gagauz language, which is separate from Balkan Gagauz Turkish.
Etymology Gagauz is the most widely accepted singular and plural form of the name, and some references use Gagauzy (from Ukrainian) or Gagauzi. Other variations including Gagauzes and Gagauzians appear rarely.
Before the Russian Revolution they were commonly referred to as "Turkic-speaking old Bulgars". Gagauz agricultural settlers in Uzbekistan called themselves "Eski Bulgarlar" (meaning Old Bulgars) in the 1930s.
According to Astrid Menz:
Geographical distribution
Outside Moldova, a minority of Gagauz people live in the Ukrainian regions of Odesa and Zaporizhzhia. They are also in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Bulgaria, Greece, Romania, Brazil, Turkmenistan, Belarus, Estonia, Latvia, Georgia, Turkey, and the Russian region of Kabardino-Balkaria.
The Gagauz people are one of the largest ethnic minorities in Moldova. During the Russian colonization of southern Bessarabia (Budjak), in the early 19th century, the Gagauz people moved from the eastern Balkans, beginning to stabilize their presence on the future territory of the Republic of Moldova. The Gagauz are not equally distributed on the territory of Moldova, living primarily in the southern part of the country, particularly in the Autonomous Territorial Unit of Gagauzia. They follow a primarily rural lifestyle.
The Gagauz are the third minority ethnic group in the Republic of Moldova, counting 126,010 people according to the 2014 census, i.e. 4.57% of the total population (without Transnistria). Their share in the ethnic composition of the country is gradually increasing. They are the majority of Gagauzia's population (83.8%), while in Taraclia District, which is inhabited primarily by Bulgarians, they comprise 9.0% of the total population. In Basarabeasca District they are 7.4% of the district's population, but gradually declining. In Cahul district, they have a small presence (2.7% of the district's population). In the rest of Moldova their share is lower than 1%. The internal migration of Gagauz in Moldova is low. Most Gagauz who leave Gagauzia migrate to Russia.
Due to their concentration in the areas around the border between Moldova and Ukraine, modern Gagauz people marry primarily with other Gagauz; thus keeping a high degree of ethnic stability. However, in the recent past, the situation was somewhat different. In the early 20th century, the ratio of Gagauz and Bulgarians in the population of Comrat was approximately 2:1. In the late 20th century, due to assimilation and higher fertility rates within the Gagauz, the ratio was 1:14. Nowadays, similar ratios between Gagauz and Bulgarians are preserved in some villages. For practical reasons, a contemporary Gagauz usually speaks at least two languages. In their daily life they use Gagauz and Russian, but many can speak Romanian as well.
History
Origins The origin of the Gagauz is obscure. In the beginning of the 20th century, a Bulgarian historian counted 19 different theories about their origin. A few decades later the Gagauz ethnologist M. N. Guboglo increased the number to 21. In some of those theories the Gagauz people are presented as descendants of the Pechenegs, the Cumans-Kipchaks or a clan of Seljuk Turks or a mix of all. Others doubt altogether that the Gagauz are of Turkic origin at all and claimed that they are of Turkified Bulgarian or Greek origin. The fact that their religion is Eastern Orthodox Christianity may suggest that their ancestors already lived in the Balkans before the Ottoman conquest in the late 14th century.
Seljuk (Anatolian) hypothesis According to the 15th-century Selçukname narrative, in 1261 Turkoman dervish Sarı Saltık accompanied a group of Turkomans into Dobruja, where they were settled by the Byzantine emperor Michael VIII Palaiologos to protect the northern frontier of the empire. However, Dobruja was occupied by Tatars in the same period. The same source places him in Crimea after 1265, among the Turkomans transferred there by Berke, khaghan of the Golden Horde, and after 1280 mentions him leading the nomads back to Dobruja. After the death of Sarı Saltık, part of the Turkomans returned to Anatolia and became the ancestors of the Karamanlides, while others remained and became Christians. According to A.F. Bajora, this event was a myth brought into Dobruja by the Tatars and not a true historical event. The Seljuk theory has been criticized because archaeologically no "secular and compact" presence of Seljuks has been confirmed. It is also hard to believe that Seljuk Muslims converted to Christianity when their fellow Muslim Tatars lived in the North.
Steppe hypothesis The Steppe hypothesis suggests that the Gagauz may be descendants of other Turkic nomadic tribes than Seljuks: Bulgars and Cumans-Kipchaks from the Eurasian steppes. In the 19th century, before their migration to Bessarabia, the Gagauz from the Bulgarian territories of the Ottoman Empire considered themselves Bulgarians. Ethnological research suggests "Gagauz" was a linguistic distinction and not ethnic. The Gagauz at that time called themselves "Hasli Bulgar" (True Bulgarians) or "Eski Bulgar" (Old Bulgarians) and considered the term Gagauz to be demeaning when applied to them by the Slavic-speaking Bulgarians.
The Gagauz called their language "Turkish" and claimed descent from then-Turkic-speaking Bulgars who in the 7th century established the First Bulgarian Empire on the Danube. Indeed, one modern Gagauz surname is Qipcakli.Boĭkova, Elena Vladimirovna; Rybakov, R. B. (2006). Kinship in the Altaic World. Otto Harrassowitz Verlag. p. 47MacDermott, Mercia (1998). Bulgarian Folk Customs. Jessica Kingsley Publishers. p. 27. The Russian Empire Census of 1897 did not distinguish the Gagauz as a specific group, but it reported the existence of 55,790 native speakers of a "Turkish language" (presumably the Gagauz language) in the Bessarabia Governorate.Russian 1897 Census data - breakdown by region and language. Besides "Turkish", the only other Turkic languages reported by the Census of 1897 as spoken in Bessarabia were the "Tatar" (777 native speakers), Turkmen (405), and Chuvash (73). According to historian A.F. Bajora, although this theory has many convincing arguments, the main counter-argument to this theory is that the Cuman language and the Gagauz language were languages belonging to different branches of Turkic.
Greek hypothesis According to a version of this hypothesis, the Gagauz immigrated to the Balkans from Anatolia and, while they kept their Greek Orthodox religion, they were linguistically assimilated (Turkified). According to another version, the Ottomans found a native Greek population in Dobruja in the 14th century and, due to their population being lower than the number of Turkish settlers, this Greek population, too, kept their Greek Orthodox religion but got linguistically assimilated (Turkified). In this vein of linguistic assimilation, the Gagauz have been compared to the Karamanlides.
An argument that favors the Greek hypothesis is given by genetic research, which shows that the Gagauz are genetically European. During the Greek War of Independence the Gagauz in Bessarabia and Bulgaria enlisted in the armies of Alexander Ypsilantis and fought for the Greek side in the war. The Greek hypothesis was favored most notably by Konstantin Jireček, among others.
Bulgarian hypothesis Bulgarian sources argue that the Gagauz are Turkified Bulgarians because most of the Gagauz people in Bulgaria consider themselves natives ("Erli") meaning real natives. According to this theory, the Gagauz are either direct descendants of the Medieval Turkic Bulgars, or of Slavic Bulgarian origin, being no different than the rest of the Bulgarians, before the Turkic language spread among them. According to A.F. Bajora this theory has many strong arguments, but states that the fact that Ottoman Turks did not force their subjects to accept their language and only compelled them to convert to Islam, and that not all Gagauz in Bulgaria consider themselves Bulgarians, are strong counter-arguments.
Modern history
Between 1820 and 1846, the Russian Empire allocated land to the Gagauz and gave them financial incentives to settle in Bessarabia in the settlements vacated by the Nogai tribes. They settled in Bessarabia along with Bassarabian Bulgarians, mainly in Avdarma, Comrat (or Komrat), Congaz (Kongaz), Tomai, Cișmichioi and other former Nogai villages located in the central Budjak region. Originally, the Gagauz also settled in several villages belonging to boyars throughout southern Bessarabia and the Principality of Moldavia, but soon moved to join their kin in the Bugeac. Until 1869, the Gagauz in Bessarabia were described as Bulgarians. During the Romanian rule of southernmost Bessarabia (1856–1878), they supported Bulgarian schools in their settlements and participated in the Bulgarian national movement. Therefore, some ethnologists (Karel Škorpil, Gavril Zanetov (himself a Gagauz), Benyo Tsonev) claim Bulgarian origin for the Gagauz.
In the 1860s, some Gagauz resettled to the vicinity of Berdiansk on the Sea of Azov coast, and in 1908–1914 to Central Asia.
With the exception of a six-day independence in the winter of 1906, when a peasant uprising declared the autonomous Comrat Republic, the Gagauz people have mainly been ruled by the Russian Empire, Romania, the Soviet Union, and Moldova.
The wave of Stolypin agrarian policies carried some Gagauz to Kazakhstan between 1912 and 1914, and later yet another group settled in Uzbekistan during the very troubled years of initial collectivization. So as not to lose their civil rights, they called themselves Bulgarians in the 1930s; the Gagauz of the village of Mayslerge in the Tashkent District retain that designation to this day.
In 1970 the total population of the Gagauz reached 156,600 in the USSR (26,400 of them lived in the Ukrainian SSR and 125,000 in the Moldavian SSR). In 1979, about 173,000 Gagauz lived in the USSR.
Gagauz nationalism remained an intellectual movement during the 1980s but strengthened by the end of the decade as both elites and opposition groups in the Soviet Union began to embrace nationalist ideals. In 1988, activists from the local intelligentsia aligned with other ethnic minorities to create the movement known as the "Gagauz People" (Gagauz: Gagauz halkı). A year later, the "Gagauz People" held its first assembly which accepted the resolution to create an autonomous territory in the southern Moldavian SSR, with Comrat designated as capital. The Gagauz nationalist movement increased in popularity when Moldovan was accepted as the official language of the Republic of Moldova in August 1989.Legea cu privire la functionarea limbilor vorbite pe teritoriul RSS Moldovenesti Nr.3465-XI din 01.09.89 Vestile nr.9/217, 1989 (Law regarding the usage of languages spoken on the territory of the Republic of Moldova): "Moldavian RSS supports the desire of the Moldovans that live across the borders of the Republic, and considering the really existing linguistical Moldo-Romanian identity - of the Romanians that live on the territory of the USSR, of doing their studies and satisfying their cultural needs in their maternal language." In November 1989, the Gagauz ASSR within Moldova was declared.
Gagauz nationalism in independent Moldova