Window on Eurasia

A Renewed Gagauz Challenge to Moldova, Moscow and the West

Paul Goble

Vienna, July 19, 2006 – The Gagauz, a 100,000-strong Christian Turkic nation in southeastern Moldova, is preparing to challenge not only the Moldovan Republic in which they live but also to call into question the policies both Moscow and the West have adopted to deal with ethnic issues across the post-Soviet region.

Tomorrow and Friday near Komrat, an Alternative Congress of the Gagauz
of the World is scheduled to meet and to adopt a resolution denouncing
the 1994 agreement between the Gagauz and Chisinau, calling for a
referendum on the independence of Gagauzia, and setting up a permanent
international commission on Gagauz issues.

A draft version of this resolution was posted on a Russian website
yesterday
[http://evrazia.org/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=3176].

And while many may see it as little more than a part of Moscow’s efforts
to support Transdniestria, this resolution could prove even more
destabilizing than that Russian campaign.

The 2400-word draft reviews the history of Moldovan-Gagauz relations
over the last 20 years and reaches a number of conclusions that not
only strike at the heart of a united and sovereign Moldovan state but create
serious potential problems for Moscow and Western governments as well.

According to the draft resolution, the decision of the Moldovan
Parliament on June 23, 1990, to denounce the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact
and to declare null and void the August 1940 Soviet legislation creating
the Moldovan SSR “in fact liquidated not only the Moldovan SSR but
Moldova itself as a state formation.”

By its June 1990 actions, the Gagauz resolution says, the Moldovan
parliament “in fact returned Moldova to the status of a Bessarabian
province within Romania, a region that had existed since 1918.”

Consequently, the draft continues, the Extraordinary Congress of Gagauz
Representatives was completely within its rights when it adopted on
August 19, 1990, a declaration about the freedom and independence of
the Gagauz people from the Moldovan Republic and the formation of a Gagauz
Republic within the USSR.”

Moreover, the draft resolution specifies, “at the time of the
collapse of the USSR and the formation of the CIS were not taken any normative
legal acts about how many independent states ought to be formed in
place of the former USSR.” That is, “there was not defined the order and
right of peoples of the former USSR for self-determination.”

And as a result of all this, it says, “there are no legal bases for
not recognizing the right of the Gagauz people to
self-determination.” Thus, the resolution calls on all governments ro recognize “the international-legal principle of the right of peoples to
self-determination” if the peoples involved have asked for it.

The resolution draft then discusses the December 1994 agreement between
Komrat and Chisinau in which the former agreed to remain part of
Moldova in exchange for the promise of the latter to guarantee Gagauz
participation in central decision making and to support Gagauz language
institutions.

But, the resolution notes, “to this day, the leadership of the
Moldovan Republic has willfully and intentionally violated and ignored
the provisions of this law.” It has failed to take the views of the
Gagauz people into account and it has not supported the creation of
Gagauz language institutions.

Indeed, “up to now,” there is not “a single pre-school, school or
higher educational institution in the Gagauz language,” the
resolution notes, observing that an attempt to create a Gagauz National University in 2001 was shot down by the failure of Chisinau to give it official
registration.

Still worse, the resolution continues, “there are reports” that
Chisinau continues “separate negotiations intended to unite Moldova
and Romania without the blessing and agreemening of the people of
Gagauzia.” As a result, “over Gagauzia,” it says, “hangs a real
threat of occupation.”

In this situation, the Gagauz people, the draft resolution says, have
no choice but to denounce the 1994 accord, call for a referendum on
independence, and seek international support for their cause via the
creation of a permanent commission for the defense of Gagauz interests.

Moscow likely views this action as part of its campaign to detach the
so-called “unrecognized” states of Transdniestria, Abkhazia, and
South Ossetia from Moldova and Georgia. But the legal theory advanced
by the Gagauz goes beyond Russian arguments and could cast doubt on the
status and borders of other units in the former Soviet space..

And the demand by the Gagauz that national self-determination should be
the basis for organizing Eurasia also could come back to haunt not only
Russia but also Western governments, many of whom have been far more
concerned with promoting stability than in protecting the right of
peoples to self-determination.

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