Găgăuzia

A different Moldova

Drive a hundred kilometres south of Chișinău and the hills flatten. Forests give way to steppe, vineyards and sunflowers. And in the street you hear a language that sounds more like Istanbul than Bucharest. Welcome to Gagauzia. The people here are Orthodox Christians, but their mother tongue is a Turkic language. They call their region Gagauz Yeri, the land of the Gagauz. Yet it is not a separate country: you drive in without a border check.

Settlers from the Balkans

No one knows for certain where the Gagauz come from. Historians have come up with more than twenty theories. What is certain is how they got here. In eighteen twelve, the Russian Empire annexed Bessarabia. The Nogai Tatars who lived in the southern steppe villages had to leave. Between eighteen twelve and eighteen forty-six, Russia settled Gagauz from present-day eastern Bulgaria in those empty villages. Communities grew up in Comrat, Congaz and Avdarma.

A six-day republic

The Gagauz always lived under someone else's rule. First Russia, then Romania, then the Soviet Union. Only in the winter of nineteen oh six were they briefly on their own. During a peasant uprising, Comrat declared its own republic. After six days, it was over. In the late nineteen eighties, the call for self-government returned. After years of tension, on the twenty-third of December nineteen ninety-four, the Moldovan parliament passed a law on the special status of Gagauzia. On the fourteenth of January nineteen ninety-five, the autonomy came into force. That December day has been a holiday ever since.

Steppe and wine

The landscape is open and dry. In summer the grass withers, in spring the steppe turns green. The economy runs on farming, above all on the vine. The region has about a dozen wineries. It also produces sunflower oil, wool, leather and carpets. Drive around and you see row upon row of vines to the horizon.

Comrat and Beșalma

Comrat is the capital of the autonomy, with about nineteen thousand inhabitants. It is the seat of the elected governor, the başkan, and the people's assembly. There are three official languages: Romanian, Gagauz and Russian. In the village of Beșalma, a museum founded by Dmitri Kara Ciobanu shows the history and traditional dress of the people. And in Vulcănești, the southernmost town in Moldova, stands an obelisk from eighteen forty-nine, commemorating a battle of seventeen seventy.

A voice of its own

At the census of twenty twenty-four, Gagauzia had just over one hundred and three thousand inhabitants. More than eight in ten call themselves Gagauz. Politically, the region often sees the world differently from the capital. In the referendum on the European Union in twenty twenty-four, about ninety-five per cent here voted against. Yet the story is remarkable. A farming people from the Balkans, settled on the steppe by a tsar, finally received its self-government from a young Moldovan republic.