The 125,000 ethnic Gagauz who live in southeastern Moldova seldom receive much press in their own right except for the fact that they are a rare Turkic people who are mostly Orthodox Christians. But they do attract broader attention when they become part of Russia’s geopolitical struggle with Turkey. Similarly, the Gagauz turn into an object of greater scrutiny when debates become more heated regarding the Moldovan central government’s possible plans to retake Russian-controlled Transnistria or integrate with Romania and the West.
And when all of those issues suddenly come together, as they have at various points since 1991, Moscow pulls out all the stops to use this nationality to promote its own interests. One of those times is now, and Moscow’s actions regarding this numerically small people are likely to have an impact not only on its traditional targets, Chisinau and Ankara, but on neighboring Kyiv as well.
The history of Moscow’s use of the Gagauz is long and complicated, ebbing and flowing depending on how the Kremlin has viewed what is going on inside Moldova and the impact of developments there on its interests (see EDM, July 26, 2013, November 11, 2014, March 31, 2015, June 5, 2018, December 10, 2020). But it is about to become even more complex for three reasons.
First, Moscow wants to counter the pro-Western president of Moldova, Maia Sandu, and derail her hopes to recover control over Transnistria (Nezavisimaya Gazeta, January 29, 2019).
Second, it wants to discourage Kyiv from supporting her by signaling, as it has earlier, the way the Russian authorities might exploit Donbas in Ukraine as they are using the Gagauz in Moldova (DS News, July 14, 2016).
Third, it seeks to counter Turkish influence on the Gagauz, given that Ankara has made clear that its vision of pan-Turkism is about a union of Turkic peoples and not just Turkic states (Ritm Eurasia, January 11, 2021; Novaya Gazeta, December 19, 2020).
Moldova from adopting more anti-Russian positions such as limiting the reach of Russian media or moving toward integration with the European Union or even the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). Consequently, Moscow’s renewed attention to the Gagauz is, first and foremost, about countering President Sandu and her pro-Western policies, Russian commentator Ilya Kiselyov says in an analysis published recently in the Ritm Eurasia portal (Ritm Eurasia, March 15).
Some in Moscow, the commentator says, dismiss Sandu as a threat because, in her first 100 days, she has not been able to form and obtain approval for a new government. But that is a mistake, Kiselyov argues. In fact, the Moldovan leader has taken many unilateral steps that alter the situation in Chisinau in ways that threaten Russia’s interests and make the position of the Gagauz potentially critical. The most important of these involve changes to the membership of the Moldovan Security Council.
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