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Concept
Gagauzia
Summary
Gagauzia or Gagauz-Yeri, officially the Autonomous Territorial Unit of Gagauzia (ATUG), is an autonomous territorial unit of Moldova. Its autonomy is ethnically motivated by the predominance in the region of the Gagauz people, who are primarily Orthodox Turkic-speaking people.
At the end of World War I, all of the territory of Gagauzia became part of the Kingdom of Romania, before being carved up into the Soviet Union in June 1940. From 1941 to 1944 it was again part of Romania, after which it was incorporated into the Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic. As the Soviet Union began to disintegrate, Gagauzia declared itself separate from Moldova in 1990 as the Gagauz Republic, but was reintegrated into Moldova in 1995.
Gagauz Yeri literally means "land of the Gagauz".
History of Gagauzia
Gagauz people#Origin
The origin of the Gagauz is obscure. In the beginning of the 20th century, Bulgarian historian M. Dimitrov counted 19 different theories about their origin. A few decades later, the Gagauz ethnologist M. N. Guboglo increased that number to 21. In some of those theories the Gagauz are presented as descendants of the Bulgars, the Cumans-Kipchaks, or a clan of Seljuk Turks led by a Turkoman dervish, Sarı Saltık. The fact that their confession is Eastern Orthodox Christianity may suggest that their ancestors already lived in the Balkans prior to the Ottoman conquest in the late 14th century. Another theory indicates that Gagauz are descendants of Kutrigurs. In the official Gagauz museum, a plaque mentions that one of the two main theories is that they descend from the Bulgars.
In 1812, Bessarabia, previously the eastern half of the Principality of Moldavia, was annexed by the Russian Empire following the defeat of the Ottoman Empire in the Russo-Turkish War of 1806–1812 (see Treaty of Bucharest (1812)). Nogai tribes who inhabited several villages in south Bessarabia (or Budjak) were forced to leave. Between 1812 and 1846, the Russians relocated the Gagauz people from what is today eastern Bulgaria (which was then under the Ottoman Empire) to the orthodox Bessarabia, mainly in the settlements vacated by the Nogai tribes.
Official source
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