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. 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. Indeed, one modern Gagauz surname is
Qipcakli. 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. 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. 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). An argument that favors the Greek hypothesis is given by genetic research, which shows that the Gagauz are genetically European.
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. 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 November 1989, the Gagauz ASSR within Moldova was declared.
Gagauz nationalism in independent Moldova In August 1990,
Comrat declared itself as the
Gagauz Republic, an autonomous Soviet republic separate from the Moldavian SSR, but the Moldovan government annulled the declaration as unconstitutional. The Gagauz were also worried about the implications for them if Moldova reunited with Romania, as seemed increasingly likely. Support for the Soviet Union remained high, with a local referendum in March 1991 yielding an almost unanimous "yes" vote to stay in the USSR; Moldovans in Gagauzia, however,
boycotted the referendum. Many Gagauz supported the
Moscow coup attempt, further straining relations with Chişinău. However, when the
Moldovan parliament voted on whether Moldova should become independent, six of the twelve Gagauz deputies voted in favor. Following the
dissolution of the Soviet Union, Gagauzia became a
de facto independent state. In February 1994,
President Mircea Snegur, opposed to Gagauz independence, promised a Gagauz
autonomous region. Snegur also opposed the suggestion that Moldova become a
federal state made up of three "republics": Moldova, Gagauzia, and Transnistria. In 1994, the Moldovan parliament awarded "the people of Gagauzia" the right of "external
self-determination" should the status of the country change. This means that in the event that Moldova decided to join another country (by all accounts this referred to Romania), the Gagauz would be entitled to decide whether to remain or not a part of the new state by means of a self-determination referendum. As a result of
a referendum to determine Gagauzia's borders, thirty settlements (three towns and twenty-seven villages) expressed their desire to be included in the Gagauz Autonomous Territorial Unit. In 1995, Gheorghe Tabunșcic was elected to serve as the Governor (
Bashkan) of Gagauzia for a four-year term, as were the deputies of the local parliament, "The People's Assembly" (
Halk Topluşu) and its chairman Petru Pașalî. ==Genetic studies==