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TURNING ETHNIC MINORITIES INTO RELIGIOUS MINORITIES: DEBATES ON THE MIGRATION OF GAGAUZES TO TURKEY IN THE INTERWAR PERIOD
Abstract
The late 19th and early 20th centuries witnessed a steady influx of Muslim émigrés into Anatolia from the Balkans and the Caucasus. The same period also saw the equally forceful emigration of Christians from Anatolia. The ethnoreligious composition of the Anatolian population dramatically changed, accordingly. The only exception to this long-standing trend was the migration of Gagauz people, a Turkic yet Orthodox Christian group, from Moldova and Romania to Turkey in the interwar period. Although the number of the Gagauz immigrants was very few, their case was still exceptional among all the population movements that took place in the same period. Contrary to the Greek-Turkish Population Exchange, for example, it was Christians but not Muslims who migrated to Turkey. Although the Gagauzes were Turkic people and there were secularizing attempts in Republican Turkey, the majority of the Turkish population was still Muslim. The religious difference between the Gagauzes and local people occasionally created problems, particularly for female students. Regarding the studies on the migration to Anatolia from the Balkans, most of the studies have been about Bulgaria and Greece while English-writing scholars have given too little attention to the case of the Gagauzes. The studies on the migration of the Gagauzes, most of which have been produced by Turkish-writing historians, have emphasized the diplomatic and political aspects of the migration. Benefiting from archival documents, periodicals, as well as oral history sources, this study aims not only to explore a topic that has been relatively neglected by the scholars it also wants to evaluate the case of the Gagauzes within a larger framework of changing identities in interwar Turkey.
Discipline
History
Geographic Area
None
Sub Area
Gender/Women's Studies