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Dr James Kapalo
Panel 4 The Roma, Gagauz, and Aromanians
Abstract
Representations of the relations between the Gagauz minority and their Romanian political and administrative masters in the inter-war years have been characterised by mutual mistrust, persecution and recrimination. This picture is at least partly the product of both post-war Soviet propaganda and more recent experiences of conflict within the Moldovan state. However, gaining a satisfactory understanding of how a politically and economically marginalised and geographically peripheral group such as the Gagauz experienced this period of Romanian rule is particularly problematic.
Much of what we know of the ‘Gagauz perspective’ on this period is through the prism of one man’s writing and activities, the Orthodox priest Mihail Çakir. Çakir is considered the founder of the Gagauz national movement and father of Gagauz letters but he was also very much a man of the Church. From the early years of the 20th century Çakir single-handedly embarked on translating the entire Orthodox canon into the Gagauz language in order to protect and strengthen the faith of his people. It was in his role as both a national and religious leader that Çakir steered the course of his people’s national awakening in the sensitive political climate of 1930s Romania.
It is the aim of this paper to explore, mainly through readings of Çakir’s ‘History of the Gagauz of Bessarabia’ (1933) and his Romanian language articles for the journal Viața Basarabiei (1934-36), the role he played as ‘interpreter’ of Gagauz identity, religiosity and culture to a Romanian audience and also as educator and spiritual leader of his people during this period. We ask to what extent was the course that Çakir steered, emphasising as it did the spiritual bonds of Orthodoxy with the Romanian nation whilst also encouraging and sponsoring a national identity for the Gagauz based on linguistic and ethnic affinity with Turkey, moulded by the dominant Romanian nation-building discourses of the time? And in what regard should we consider the Gagauz national movement to have been founded on Orthodox Christian concerns rather than ethno-linguistic solidarity.
Biography
I am currently preparing my doctoral thesis based on a study of the religious life of Turkish speaking Orthodox Christians in the Republic of Moldova. This study examines the historical, political and social factors that have contributed to the construction of the ethnic and religious identity of the Gagauz that bridges Russian Orthodoxy on the one hand and Turkish ethnicity, with its cultural and religious affiliations with Islam, on the other. (working title: ‘Text, Context, Performance: The Lay Institutions of Gagauz Orthodoxy’).
Current research interests include:
- Minority religions and the cultures of religious minorities in Turkey and the Balkans
- Christian-Muslim relations in South Eastern Europe
- Clerical agency and clericalism in South Eastern Europe
- Performance based approaches to study of religion
- Fieldwork in the study of religions
- Apocryphal literatures in Eastern European Christianities
Related Publications
- “The Career of Father Mihail Çakir - The Cyril and Methodius of the Gagauz.” Solanus 21 (2007): pp.5-18.
- “‘İisus Hristos yapmış bir büük pınar …’: Epic Healing Charms amongst the Gagauz of Moldova.” G. Grigorov (ed.). Bulgari i Gagauzi Zaedno Prez Godinite. Velico Târnovo: Faber, 2007: pp.67-73.
- “Molitva i zaklinaniya v religioznom folklore gagauzov.” Istoria i Kultura Gagauzov. Komrat-Kishinev: Pontus, 2006: pp. 477-86.
