Gagauz People

Song: Andrej Ivanov & Olesa Tukan - Yasa Halkim The Gagauz people are a small Turkic ethnic group living mostly in southern Moldova (Gagauzia), southwestern Ukraine (Budjak) and north-eastern Bulgaria (Dobruja). Unlike most other Turkic peoples, the Gagauz are predominantly Orthodox Christians. There is a related ethnic group also called Gagavuz (or Gajal) living in the European part of northwestern Turkey. The Gagauz language belongs to the Oghuz branch of the Turkic languages, which also includes the Azeri, Turkish, and Turkmen languages. The Gagauz language is particularly close to the Balkan Turkish dialects spoken in Greece, northeastern Bulgaria, and in the Kumanovo and Bitola areas of Macedonia. The Balkan Turkic languages, including Gagauz, are a typologically interesting case, because they are closely related to Turkish and at the same time contain a North-Turkic (Tartar or Kypchak) element besides the main South-Turkic (Oghuz) element (Pokrovskaya,1964). The modern Gagauz language has two dialects: central (or Bulgar) and southern (or maritime) (Pokrovskaya, 1964; Gordon, 2005). It is also important to mention that the Gagauzes are Orthodox Christians, whereas most of the Turkic groups mentioned above are Muslims