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17 JEMIE 1 (2018)

handle is hein.journals/jemie2018 and id is 1 raw text is: S Journal on Ethnopolitics and Minority Issues in Europe JEM IE Vol 17, No 1, 2018, 1-23. Copyright @ ECMI 2018 This article is located at: http://www.ecmide/fileadmin/downloads/publications/JEMIE/2018/Sch1 How could the Gagauz Achieve Autonomy and what has it Achieved for them? A Comparison Among Neighbours on the Moldova-Ukrainian Border Simon Schlegel* East-Ukrainian Centre for Civic Initiatives Abstract In southern Bessarabia, a multi-ethnic region on the Moldovan-Ukrainian border, one ethnic group, the Turkic speaking Gagauz, have managed to negotiate a unique autonomy status with the Moldovan government in 1994. Neither their Bulgarian neighbours nor the Gagauz on the Ukrainian side of the border have achieved a similar degree of political autonomy. The analysis presented here looks into the historical factors that enabled autonomy for the Gagauz in Moldova. It wraps up the literature on the emergence of the autonomy status and draws on interviews with activists and educators. It appears that a unique geopolitical constellation was more decisive for the achievement of autonomy than local or national ethno-politics. The comparison with neighbouring groups suggests that under the precarious economic circumstances in the region, the effect of autonomy on the preservation of language was rather small. The main effect of the autonomy was that the Gagauz elite had the means to adopt their own geopolitical position, sometimes contradicting the central government. With the beginning of the Ukrainian Russian conflict in 2014 this characteristic of Gagauz autonomy came to be seen as a potentially dangerous precedent in Ukraine. Keywords: Ukraine; Moldova; Gagauz autonomy; language policy Research for this paper has been generously funded by the Max-Planck-Institute for Social Anthropology in Halle, Germany. Correspondence details: Simon Schlegel, Vulitsya Marka Bezruchka 29, 03190 Kyiv, Ukraine. Email: simon@simon-schlegel.net.

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