The Gagauz
Bulgaria's Black Sea shore hosts several communities of Gagauz , a Turkish-speaking Christian people whose origins remain the subject of much controversy. Turkish sources maintain that they are descended from the Seljuk Turks of Sultan Izzedin Kaykaus, who came to the area in 1261 and soon converted to Christianity under pressure from their Bulgarian neighbours. This is disputed by Bulgarian ethnologists, who suggest that they are descended from the original Bulgars , the Turkic nomads who descended on the Balkans in the eighth century. Perhaps the most likely theory is that they are descended from the Cumans , another Turkic tribe who started moving into eastern Bulgaria in the twelfth century, and formed the backbone of the short-lived fourteenth-century coastal empire of Balik and Dobrotitsa, which was centred on the towns of Balchik and Kavarna. Although many Gagauz were Islamicized and assimilated by their Turkish conquerors during the Ottoman era, enough of them remained Christian to ensure their continued existence as a distinct community. Many of them emigrated to Bessarabia , where they could practise their Christian faith more freely than they could under the Ottomans. They still retain a strong presence in the former Soviet republic of Moldova, where the Gagauz lands around the provincial town of Komrat enjoy autonomous status. Those Gagauz who remained in Bulgaria found themselves increasingly torn by the national struggles of the nineteenth century, when many identified themselves with Varna's Greek population in order to distinguish themselves both from their Turk overlords and from the Bulgarian peasants who were increasingly moving into the city. Most Gagauz joined the Greeks in opposing the opening of Bulgarian-language schools and churches, and therefore received little sympathy from the Bulgarians after the Liberation. Unlike the Greeks, however, the Gagauz had no other national homeland to emigrate to, and despite their small numbers, they still retain a distinctive presence in Vinitsa, Kichevo, and a succession of villages strung out over the hills north of Varna. Older Gagauz still speak a dialect of Turkish among themselves, but a literary version of the Gagauz tongue never developed in Bulgaria, and knowledge of the language is slowly dying out among the young.
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