Springtime of Nations: Romania

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Sunday, May 18, 2014

Amidst Ukraine Crisis, Turkey Courts Tatars, Abkhaz, and Gagauz in Soft-Power Campaign for Black Sea Dominance

In the first Crimean War, in the 1860s, the Russian Empire, though it held onto that strategic peninsula, was stymied in its effort to seize all the areas around the Black Sea where the faltering Ottoman Empire’s grip was loosening. But the same geopolitical tension between Constantinople and Moscow was in play over the next fifty years in the Russo-Turkish Wars, the Balkan Wars, and the First World War. Through all of these later conflicts, Russia either extended or solidified its control of more Black Sea coastline. With the transformation of Romania and Bulgaria into client states of the Soviet Union after the Second World War, Turkey was reduced to controlling only the very southern, though long, Anatolian coast of the Black Sea.

Then the break-up of the Soviet Union in 1991 freed Romania, Bulgaria, Moldova, Georgia, and Ukraine from Moscow’s control. The first two in 2004 joined the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), of which Turkey was and is a member. The last three were leaning toward the West and aspired to NATO membership but had chunks of territory invaded and established as puppet states (e.g. Transnistria, Abkhazia, South Ossetia; more on these below) by the newly expansionist Russian Federation—the most recent instance being this spring’s secession of Crimea from Ukraine, and its subsequent annexation by Russia. But now Turkey is regrouping, in a quiet way, by trying to woo bits of the Russian-claimed and Russian-leaning territories away from Moscow.

Here is a run-down of the pincers—soft pincers, mind you—in Ankara’s new charm offensive in the northern Black Sea region.

The Crimean Mejlis in session

Crimean Tatars
Like many Muslim peoples of the former Soviet Union, Crimea’s Tatar minority speak a Turkic language, i.e. one related to Turkish. As discussed earlier in this blog, Tatars were among the most ardent proponents of Ukraine’s ties to the European Union (E.U.) and opponents of the deposed Ukrainian president, Viktor Yanukovych, and of President Vladimir Putin’s annexation of the peninsula in March 2014. Long ago, Tatars were the majority in Crimea and in what is now the south-central mainland of Ukraine until Czarist forces began pushing south in the 18th century. They were were decimated by deportation to Siberia and Central Asia by Josef Stalin as punishment for supposed colllaboration with Nazi Germany in the Second World War, and when Nikita Khrushchev, Stalin’s reformist successor, allowed many deported peoples to return home in the 1950s, Crimean Tatars (along with the Meskhetian Turks of Georgia) were not on the list. Tatars had only built their numbers up to a meagre 12% in the post-Soviet period.

Deportation by Stalin is still a stinging memory for Crimean Tatars.

The Russian annexation caused something of an exodus of Tatars to the Ukrainian mainland—reliable numbers are still hard to come by—and the news out of Crimea on treatment of Tatars has been grim. Although Putin was shamed into “rehabilitating” the ethnic group—essentially, doing what Khrushchev had refused to do in the 1950s, making them an official nationality with minority rights—Tatars are under fire. Crimea’s chief public prosector, Natalia Poklonskaya, has said the autonomous but mostly toothless Mejlis (Council) of the Crimean Tatar Nation was full of “extremists.” Poklonskaya was responding to council members’ vociferous protests after Mustafa Dzhemilev (a.k.a., in Tatar, Mustafa Abdülcemil Kırımoğlu), a former Mejlis chairman and an iconic leader in the struggle for Tatar rights, was barred from reentering Crimea on his return from a visit to Kyiv, the capital of the rump Ukraine whose new government the Kremlin demonizes.

Dzhemilev is banned from Crimea.

Poklonskaya (who, in one of the weird twists of this Second Crimean War, has become an unexpected international celebrity, especially in Japan, due to her anime-style, doe-eyed, angelic looks) is threatening to “liquidate” (her word) the Mejlis outright, along with other allied organizations. Moscow propaganda to the contrary, the corrupt and dysfunctional pre-crisis Ukraine had been doing its best to be inclusive, though many Tatar former deportees were forced into substandard squat housing. Nonetheless, Tatars who now find themselves suddenly residents of Russia are subject to the same prejudices, whims, and pogroms as other beleaguered Muslim groups within the Russian Federation such as Chechens and Volga Tatars. Today, May 18th, is the 70th anniversary of Stalin’s deportations of Tatars. Most expect some kind of flare-up of ethnic tension, especially with Putin having just placed a ban on mass demonstrations in Crimea for fear of a Tatar rally against Russian rule, and as Russian secret police raided the still-exiled Dzhemilev’s home (he is banned from Russia for five years) with a full battalion on May 16th, causing his wife to be hospitalized.

Natalia Poklonskaya threatens Crimean Tatars with “liquidation,”
even as her doe-eyed innocence captures the hearts of anime fans worldwide.

But Turkey has stepped into the fray, initiating a series of high-level contacts between its foreign ministry and Dzhemilev and other representatives of the Mejlis. In April, Dzhemilev was brought to Ankara to receive Turkey’s Order of State award—its highest honor, whose previous recipients include anti-Soviet icons like Lech Wałęsa and Václav Havel. Turkey’s prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, has pledged support to protect Tatar language and culture and Tatar communities from Russian repression and to support individual Tatar families in either fleeing Crimea or settling there from eastern exile, as they choose. Within Crimea, on March 29th, the Mejlis reacted to the annexation by voting to pursue “national and territorial autonomy” within Russia. The March 29th resolution, titled “On the Crimean Tatar People’s Right to Self-Determination on Their Historical Territory in Crimea,” reads, in part, “By adopting this document, we inform all parties of the beginning of political and legal procedures for setting up a national autonomous territory of the Crimean Tatar people on their historical territory in Crimea.” Turkey has given tacit support, but it may not be able to do much to help in concrete ways. After all, Turkey’s membership in NATO, with its mutual-defense pact, means that an out and out military conflict with Russia would pretty much trigger World War III, which no one wants. The declaration is vague, in any case. Establishing an autonomous ethnic region for Tatars on the peninsula would be resisted by the Kremlin, and in any case the bulk of the Tatar population is in the east of the peninsula, clustered around the city of Kerch at the Strait of Kerch, which is the entry point of supplies from the Russian mainland now that the Ukrainian government has shown its willingness to seal the isthmus to the Ukrainian mainland in order to stymie the Russians.

Dzhemilev accepting turkey’s Order of State Award, in front of a Turkish flag
and with a Crimean-Tatar-flag tie and a Ukrainian-flag pin.

Abkhazia
One piece of Putin’s empire which has particular cultural and historic ties with Turkey is Abkhazia, one of the two chunks of the Republic of Georgia (South Ossetia is the other) which declared themselves independent of Georgia after the fall of Communism and which have become client states, with Russia granting them diplomatic recognition after its victory over Georgia in the brief South Ossetia War in 2008. Only a handful of countries have followed suit, namely Nicaragua, Venezuela, and the minuscule South Pacific island of Nauru. Tuvalu (as reported at the time in this blog) withdrew its diplomatic recognition in the wake of the Crimean annexation. The Crimean annexation made Abkhazians and South Ossetians wonder what was next for them. Some hoped that they were next in line for formal absorption into Russia, being fed up with their current diplomatic limbo and fearful that, as Tuvalu’s defection indicated, Putin’s new aggressiveness can only further isolate the two republics. But Russia’s foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, dashed those hopes last month when he announced that there were no plans and no reason for Russia to annex the two republics. (But Abkhazia and South Ossetia are tentatively slated to join Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Armenia in the new “Eurasian Union” trade bloc that Putin is establishing as a counterweight to the E.U.—the same bloc whose wooing of Ukraine caused the political crisis there to flare up late last year.)

In any case, Abkhazia has responded to this snub by attempting, on its own, to increase its relations with nations beyond Russia, and Turkey has become a natural choice. Turkey is already one of Abkhazia’s most significant trading partners (much of it under the table), and Turkey is home to about a half-million Abkhaz who are descended from refugees from Russia’s invasions of the Caucasus in the 19th century. Turkey is also home to perhaps as many as 2 million Circassians—the ethnic group whose traditional territory stretches along the Black Sea between Abkhazia and Crimea, including Sochi, site of this year’s Winter Olympics. Circassian nationalism has increased recently (as discussed in this blog), and Abkhaz are sometimes considered a branch of the Circassian nation. (Circassian is a language unrelated to either Russian or Turkish.) During the Russo-Turkish wars in the 19th century, Abkhaz were split between Muslims who sided with the Ottomans and Eastern Orthodox Christians who sided with the Czar. Russian victory chased most Muslim Abkhaz to Turkey. In the Soviet period, Abkhaz were mostly Muslim but became outnumbered by ethnic Georgians in their “autonomous” republic within the Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic. Secession from Georgia in 1992 was accompanied by ethnic cleansing of Georgians from Abkhazia. That, and the restoration of religious freedom, helped make Muslims by now a large-ish (16%) minority in Abkhazia. (South Ossetia, by contrast, is overwhelmingly Christian.)

The flag of Abkhazia

This in fact may be one reason behind Kremlin wariness of absorbing Abkhazia next: in addition to further antagonizing the West, Abkhazian annexation would mean bringing into the Russian empire 40,000 Muslims, with the possibility that they—and maybe even some Christian Abkhaz—may hitch their wagon to the rising nationalism among the predominantly-Muslim Circassians, who are focused on uniting their nation as a single entity within the Russian Federation. (Currently, they are dispersed among three separate republics in the north Caucasus.)

Abkhazia’s president, Aleksandr Ankvab, hobnobs with Putin—
but isn’t getting what he wants out of the relationship.

Georgia is not happy about any Abkhaz–Turkish friendliness, and when eighty Turkish journalists formed an official delegation to Abkhazia earlier this month, the Georgian government cried foul. Georgian law forbids entry to Abkhazia other than via Georgian territory (though it knows it can do nothing about Abkhazian–Russian border traffic), and Georgia denies entry to anyone with an Abkhazian or South Ossetian stamp in his or her passport. That diplomatic kerfuffle between Ankara and Tbilisi took some work to smooth over. But the reality is that Georgia is not in a position to risk what relations it does have with any NATO country, especially as a mostly symbolic protest over territories that it in its heart realizes it has lost for good. Though Georgians will not admit this, they would rather have an Abkhazia aligned with Turkey than with Moscow.

By some reckonings, the Circassian nation, which abuts Crimea
and has a large diaspora in Turkey, includes Abkhazia.

Gagauzia
At the other end of the Black Sea is another cluster of Turkic ethnicity in a sea of Slavic and Romanian peoples, the 160,000 or so Gagauz, who speak a Turkic language but are mostly Eastern Orthodox Christian. Gagauz Yeri, or the Autonomous Territorial Unit of Gagauzia, as their homeland is called, is an autonomous region within the Republic of Moldova, the former Moldavian S.S.R., which is mostly ethnically Moldavian (i.e. Romanian). The Moldovan government has gone into crisis mode this year over the Russian annexation of Crimea. Its own eastern region of Transnistria (a.k.a. Transdniestria, a.k.a. Pridnestrovia) is a de facto independent puppet state of Russia, and many fear that Russia will try to annex Transnistria next. (Ethnically, it is about a third Moldovan (i.e. Romanian), a third Russian, and a third Ukrainian.) The tiny unrecognized republic’s government has already formally requested admission to the Russian Federation, though Putin may be wondering if he should wait first until more or all of Ukraine’s Black Sea coast comes under Russian or pro-Russian control—in the way that Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts in the east now have—so that Transnistria can be connected to Russia proper by a land-bridge. Transnistria abuts Ukraine’s mostly-Russian-speaking Odessa oblast, whose capital was built by Catherine the Great and which many Russians feel should not be part of Ukraine.

Though the Gagauz people have a generous autonomous region in southern Moldova, they do lean toward Moscow. In February of this year (as reported at the time in this blog), Gagauzia held a local referendum in its 700 square miles of territory. In that vote, 98.9% said that Gagauzia should declare independence in case Romania and Moldova attempt reunification. (Moldavia is one of the traditional three constituent lands of Romania, along with Wallachia and Transylvania.) Also, 98.4% of voters preferred membership in Putin’s new “Eurasian Union” trade bloc to membership in the E.U., of which Romania is part. Perhaps Gagauz fear that Romanian nationalists would erase their autonomous region in case of reunification, just as the Szekler (i.e. Hungarian) minority lost their autonomous region farther west in Romania, in the Transylvania region. Romania and Bulgaria are also both seeing rising discontent with Muslim refugees from the civil war in Syria and intolerance of Muslims in general. Though Gagauz are not Muslim, they are Turkic and are eastern in their culture and might face persecution. Or so they fear: in reality, indigenous minorities are well protected in the E.U., but Gagauz are wary of ethnic Romanians after a history of persecution.

Welcome to Gagauzia

Here is where Turkey may step into the breach. The Turkish Cooperation and Development Agency (analogous to the United States Agency for International Development, or USAID) has been offering economic and educational support to Gagauzia, and last week the speaker of Turkey’s parliament, Cemil Çiçek, made a formal visit to Gagauzia to offer whatever support it could. Ankara may be hoping that they can peel away some Gagauz support for Moscow in the wake of the new Russian expansionism, especially after Gagauz have had the chance to see the fate (see above) of their fellow Turcomans, the Tatars, in annexed Crimea. Gagauzia abuts the portion of Ukraine’s Odessa oblast which is nearly separated from the rest by the narrow point where Transnistria almost meets the Black Sea. All this area is served by the navigable estuary of the Dniester River and counts, strategically and economically speaking, as Black Sea coast. If Russia were to annex Transnistria, it would put Moldova in the position, like the current rump Ukraine, of having to retreat into neutrality in order to save what is left of its territory. That strategic and territorial loss to the West could be counteracted by a Gagauzia that, whatever its status, is oriented to warm relations with a NATO country. And if, as seems likely, there is a ground war for control of Odessa oblast as there already is for Donetsk and Luhansk farther east, having Gagauzia as a friendly territory will be an asset to either side.

Cemil Çiçek in Gagauzia

Sometimes NATO wonders whether it is worth having Turkey in its ranks. Since the end of the Cold War and the beginning of the “War on Terror” in the Middle East, Turkey has been a more awkward fit with the predominantly-European and predominantly-Christian alliance. And Turkey’s chances for joining the E.U. look as poor as ever. But if Turkey can help contain Russia by preventing Putin’s tentacles from swarming around all sides of the Black Sea, NATO will be grateful.

Tuesday, February 4, 2014

Minuscule Gagauzia Votes 99% to Declare Independence If Moldova Attempts Romanian Reunification

Ukrainians in their hundreds of thousands may be proclaiming loud and clear that they want closer ties with western Europe than with Russia, but in a nearby tiny sliver of the former Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, a small band of diaspora Turks are claiming nationhood and choosing Moscow over Brussels.

More than 70% of eligible voters in Gagauzia, an autonomous region within the Republic of Moldova (formerly the Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic), turned out on February 2nd to answer a series questions about their tiny nation’s geopolitical future.

Welcome to Gagauzia

On the question of trade, 98.4% of voters in the region of 155,000 people said they wanted closer ties with the nascent Eurasian Union, a proposed bloc of Soviet successor states aligned with Moscow (probably to include Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Armenia at least; the first three have had a customs union since 2010). 97.2% of Gagauz said they were against any closer relationship with the European Union (E.U.). Moldova, whose 3.5 million or so people are about 76% ethnic Romanian (Moldavia is one of the traditional three constituent portions of the Romanian nation, alongside Wallachia and Transylvania) and only about 6% ethnic Russian, is not a member of the E.U. but signed comprehensive trade agreements with the E.U. in November, including an Association Agreement, generally seen as the first step in the long path toward candidacy for membership. Romania has been an E.U. member state since 2007.

A Romanian irredentist makes his (or her) point as well.

A third question on this week’s Gagauzian ballot asked whether Gagauz Yeri, the Autonomous Territorial Unit of Gagauzia, should declare independence in the event that Moldova and Romania attempted reunification. 98.9% said yes (following an official statement to the contrary by the Gagauz government back in 2012, as reported at the time in this blog).

Here she comes ... Miss Gagauzia ...
The Gagauz are pursuing all trappings of nationhood.

Independence may be a hard row to hoe for Gagauzia, which is a grapeshot of tiny discontinuous landlocked territories in southern Moldova totalling only about 700 square miles. But there is a precedent. Gagauzia and another, larger sliver of Moldova, running most of the length of Moldova’s official border with Ukraine, both declared independence in 1990 when the Soviet Union imploded. Moldova soon wooed the Gagauz back into its politic by promising, and delivering, enhanced autonomy. But the other sliver, called the Pridnestrovian Moldavian Republic, or Transnistria or Transdniestria for short, remains “independent” (see map above). No country recognizes it, but because ethnic Russians and Ukrainians make up almost 60% of its population and Moldovans (i.e. Romanians) less than a third, it is maintained by Russia as a puppet state, struggling along only with cash infusions from the Kremlin. It has no real hopes of becoming a successful, recognized state; it is being maintained, with its own currency and security provided by Russia’s 14th Army. (See an article from this blog on Transnistria.) Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, keeps it running mainly to make a point, and to preserve Moscow’s last foothold in the Balkans. With Ukraine threatening to turn sharply West, Transnistria would be even more isolated. (It also has said it wants to join the Eurasian Union.)

Moldovan and Gagauz flags often fly side by side.
Moldovan and Transnistrian ones, never.

For the past nearly quarter-century of post-Communist history, the otherwise logical good idea of Romanian and Moldovan reunification has been put seemingly permanently on the back burner, since that would involve deciding the fate of Transnistria. Right now, Moldova claims Transnistria but allows it its de facto independence. That careful fiction would have to be replaced with something else. There was already a war when Transnistria secured its independence-such-as-it-is. No one wants another one. Romania is also in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). Allowing a territory occupied by Russian troops to become E.U. territory would be unthinkable. The E.U. already regrets admitting Cyprus, the northern third of which is a de facto independent puppet state of Turkey called the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus. Plus, Putin is too pig-headed to be at all interested in a negotiated military pullback from Transnistria, certainly not while he’s fighting like hell to keep Ukraine in his orbit.

Gagauzia’s unofficial, and far superior, flag

Therefore, because Romania and Moldova are to all practical purposes unable to reunify, the Gagauz referendum question on independence is moot, until and unless there are drastic changes in the geopolitics of the immediate neighborhood. But the ongoing Ukraine crisis might lead to just that. Either way, the Gagauz have made their point. They don’t feel very Moldovan and are just waiting for their chance to bolt. Moldova had early said that the Gagauz referendum was illegal. That they held it at all indicates they are already feeling pretty independent.

[For those who are wondering, yes, this blog is tied in with a forthcoming book, a sort of encyclopedic atlas to be published by Auslander and Fox under the title Let’s Split! A Complete Guide to Separatist Movements, Independence Struggles, Breakaway Republics, Rebel Provinces, Pseudostates, Puppet States, Tribal Fiefdoms, Micronations, and Do-It-Yourself Countries, from Chiapas to Chechnya and Tibet to Texas. Look for it some time in 2014. I will be keeping readers posted of further publication news.]

Tuesday, October 8, 2013

El Salvador Grants Recognition to Kosovo as Haiti Cuts Ties with Sahrawi Republic

It’s been a week of one step forward and one step back for partially recognized states in the Old World trying to solidify diplomatic support in the Americas. The Republic of El Salvador became the 105th sovereign state to recognize the independence of the Republic of Kosovo, but the Republic of Haiti surprised observers by revoking its diplomatic recognition of the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (S.A.D.R.) (a.k.a. Western Sahara), the former Spanish Sahara mostly occupied by Morocco.

The October 4th announcement on Kosovo came via the Twitter feed of Enver Hoxhaj, the country’s foreign minister, who learned of El Salvador’s decision through the Kosovar embassy in New York. Kosovo had most recently received recognition from Libya, Grenada, and Thailand. The former Serbian province, still claimed by the Republic of Serbia, has been steadily gaining diplomatic partners following the signal moment in December 2012 when the Commonwealth of Dominica, a former British colony in the Caribbean, became the 97th United Nations member-state to grant recognition, which pushed Kosovo over the 50% mark (as reported at the time in this blog).

Countries that recognize Kosovo are shown in green.

But Kosovo’s membership in the U.N. General Assembly is still blocked by two of the five veto-wielding permanent members of the U.N. Security Council—the Russian Federation and the People’s Republic of China, both for reasons of paranoia about their own internal fissions and Russia for the added reason of an emotional pan-Slavic, and thus pro-Serbian, ideological allegiance. Currently, Western allies of Kosovo are attempting at least to convince some of the holdouts among Kosovo’s immediate neighbors, in particular Romania and Greece.

In the case of Greece, Kosovo’s secession still brings up ugly memories of the predominantly-Slavic Republic of Macedonia’s emergence from the wreckage of Yugoslavia in 1993. Athens still points out that Macedonia is historically a culturally-Greek region lying mostly within Greece (Alexander the Great was Macedonian, for example). Greeks also seem unable to shake memories of the Second World War, following which a new Macedonia within Yugoslavia—with the current republic’s borders—was founded by partisans of a fascist insurgent army which had connived in Nazi-allied Bulgaria’s invasion of Greece and had tried to seat an Aromanian nationalist as voivode (prince) of an independent Slavic state in the Macedonia region that would be a refuge for Greece’s Aromanian minority as well. (Aromanians speak a language related to Romanian.) Romania itself, a staunch European Union and NATO member, will probably come around. (See more detail on Kosovo’s status in my blog article from last year on the subject.)

The dotted line shows the approximate extent of the traditional Greek region of Macedonia.

Other European holdouts include Spain, which has its own internal Basque and Catalan separatist movements, and Slovakia.

Countries that recognize the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic are in green. Dark grey are those, including Haiti, that have withdrawn recognition over the years. The S.A.D.R. itself is in red.

A bit less understandable than Kosovo’s successes and setbacks is the recent move by Haiti, announced this week, to withdraw its 2006 recognition of the Sahrawi republic. The S.A.D.R. claims all of Western Sahara but the “black,” sub-Saharan Sahrawi people are at the mercy of the brutal repression of (Arab) Moroccan occupation forces. The S.A.D.R., which administers only a sliver of land behind a series of sand berms erected by Morocco, is recognized by 49 countries, only just over a quarter of U.N. member states, including most of Africa and a considerable number of Latin American countries as well—also by the African Union (A.U.). Haiti follows a few other Caribbean nations in withdrawing membership—mostly as a result of buckling to diplomatic pressure from Morocco, which is something of a diplomatic pariah nation within Africa but which for countries farther afield is a more promising economic partner.

In red is the territory controlled by the partially recognized Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic.

But in Haiti’s case it is disappointing because of the country’s symbolic role for African anti-colonialists. In 1804, after a successful slave revolt, Haiti became, in terms of the modern system of nation-states, the second independent modern state in the Americas (after the United States) and the first Black republic anywhere. In the late 1960s, Haiti was also the only non-African state among the five that recognized the Republic of Biafra before that nation was crushed by a brutal siege by Nigeria.

Haiti symbolizes freedom from colonialism for many sub-Saharan Africans—
but this week not so much.

Pan-African unity is supposed to be a big deal for Haiti. Perhaps it will before long come to its senses and put ideals before economics and convenience.

[Also, for those who are wondering, yes, this blog is tied in with a forthcoming book, a sort of encyclopedic atlas to be published by Auslander and Fox under the title Let’s Split! A Complete Guide to Separatist Movements, Independence Struggles, Breakaway Republics, Rebel Provinces, Pseudostates, Puppet States, Tribal Fiefdoms, Micronations, and Do-It-Yourself Countries, from Chiapas to Chechnya and Tibet to Texas. Look for it some time in 2014. I will be keeping readers posted of further publication news.]

Monday, September 23, 2013

Slovene E.U. Diplomat’s Words on Vojvodina’s Status Ruffle Serb Feathers

Vojvodine nationalists rallying in Novi Sad, the provincial capital

Jelko Kacin, a Slovenian diplomat who is the European Union’s “rapporteur” for the Republic of Serbia, stepped on a landmine in the European Parliament last week by calling for a clarification of the status of Vojvodina, an autonomous—but not really—province within Serbia. Then his remarks were interpreted with great alarm, putting the Serbian foreign ministry into damage-control mode.

Jelko Kacin

While speaking on a panel on Vojvodina at the E.U. legislature in Brussels, Belgium, Kacin said, “Having in mind upcoming negotiations on Serbia’s membership in the E.U., I believe this is the right moment to raise the question of the constitutional and statutory regulation of the autonomy of Vojvodina. The present framework for autonomy is uncertain and vague, which prevents Vojvodina, and therefore Serbia, from developing its capacities.”

Map showing Vojvodina within the former Yugoslavia (the green countries)

Vojvodina, in the north of Serbia and forming the only Serbian borders with Hungary and Croatia, is historically and potentially one of the most multi-ethnic and contentious portions of the former Yugoslavia, but it largely stayed out of the fray of the Wars of Yugoslav Secession in the early 1990s. Vojvodina was an ethnically-Hungarian part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, but when the empire was dismantled after losing the First World War the newly created independent Hungarian Republic set Vojvodina, including a portion of what is now western Romania, as a Hungarian-dominated Banat Republic. Serbian and Romanian forces invaded the fledgling Banatia, as it was also known, and divvied it up: Romania got what is now its western Transylvania region, while Serbia absorbed the rest and made it the autonomous province of Danube Banovina within the Serbian part of the new Kingdom of Yugoslavia. (For a discussion of separatism in Transylvania, see a recent article from this blog.)

During the Second World War, the Independent State of Croatia, a Nazi puppet state, and Hungary, then an Axis power, took over the province and tried to revive the Banat Republic, with ethnic Germans and Hungarians in charge. It failed, and after the war Yugoslavia filled its vacant Nazi concentration camps with Vojvodina’s Germans, who were subsequently cleansed from the province, and Danube Banovina was renamed Vojvodina.

As the “Banat Republic,” Vojvodina (dark green, at center) almost achieved independence
in the aftermath of the First World War.

Yugoslavia’s Communist dictator, Josip Broz Tito, granted Vojvodina some genuine, but limited, autonomy in 1974, but then Vojvodina’s hopes of further loosening ties to Belgrade after the fall of the Berlin Wall were dashed when Serbia’s president, Slobodan Milošević, revoked its autonomy in 1990. It has never been restored, so it is the Autonomous Province of Vojvodina in name only. Ethnically, the region is two-thirds Serb, but the 13% Magyar (ethnic Hungarian) minority feels that, with the de facto independence of Kosovo—once Serbia’s other “autonomous province”—they are the last colonized people in the Serb mini-empire. Belgrade is ever alert to the possibility of the province flaring up in rebellion.

Vojvodina’s autonomy: Tito giveth, and Slobo taketh away

In Brussels, Mr. Kacin—a former independence leader during Slovenia’s “Ten-Day War” of secession from Belgrade in 1990—was not being inflammatory. He merely pointed out that if Serbia is to get its bureaucratic house in order in preparation for E.U. candidacy, then it must sort out Vojvodina’s financial relationship to the central government. If it is an autonomous unit, then it is eligible for special E.U. funds after accession, but if so, the implication went, it would have to start being treated autonomously, and its role in the levying and spending of tax funds must be clarified. Pending resolution of the conflict over Kosovo, Serbia is considered close to the front of the line for E.U. enlargement, along with Macedonia, Montenegro, and Kosovo itself.

Aleksandar Vučić

Serbia was furious at this interest in its internal structure, however, and by September 19th, Serbia’s first deputy prime minister, Aleksandar Vučić, had bullied Kacin into appearing alongside him at a special press conference, where he intoned sternly that Kacin’s statement was liable to misinterpretation, adding, “I can say this in Kacin’s presence, because I know he also believes that Vojvodina cannot be separated from Serbia.”

One wonders if Kacin, during this, thought to himself, “Where have I heard those words before? Oh, yes—Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia, Macedonia, Montenegro, Kosovo ...”

[You can read more about Vojvodina, Kosovo, other sovereignty and independence movements both famous and obscure in my new book, a sort of encyclopedic atlas just published by Litwin Books under the title Let’s Split! A Complete Guide to Separatist Movements and Aspirant Nations, from Abkhazia to Zanzibar. The book, which contains 46 maps and 554 flags (or, more accurately, 554 flag images), is available for order now on Amazon. Meanwhile, please “like” the book (even if you haven’t read it yet) on Facebook and see this interview for more information on the book.]

Thursday, September 6, 2012

Gagauzia Threatens to Secede from Moldova If Nationalists Push Reunification with Romania

The leader of the Autonomous Territorial Unit of Gagauzia, a self-governing region of the Republic of Moldova’s Turkic-speaking minority, told media this week that increasing calls for the reunification of Moldova and Romania may push the Gagauz to declare independence. In particular, the leader, Mikhail Formuzal, cited plans to hold a Unionist march in Chișinău, the Moldovan capital, on September 16th. Previous such marches have resulted in violence between unionists and their opponents.

This part of the former Soviet empire is a region of slivers. Moldova (formerly the Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic) is really just a sliver of Romania. It is the eastern portion, known traditionally as Bessarabia (though much of true Bessarabia is in modern Ukraine) of Moldavia, which was one of the three regions—Transylvania and Wallachia are the others—which made up the Kingdom of Romania that broke free of the Ottoman Empire in the 1870s. But this Christian chunk of a Muslim empire had its rough edges: its western reaches were and are ethnically Hungarian (as discussed in detail in a recent blog posting about Romania’s Magyars), while at its eastern edge there were minorities of both Slavs (Romanians speak a Romance language) and Gagauz. The Gagauz are Eastern Orthodox Christians who speak a Turkic language and are either Seljuq Turks or Turkified Bulgars who migrated to Bessarabia from what is today Bulgaria perhaps as long ago as the 13th century. The Gagauz staged a brief, disastrous, five-day-long uprising against the Russian Empire in 1906 as the Republic of Comrat, after which they nursed their grievances for generations until reasserting themselves in the late 1980s as Communism’s grip began to loosen. They have never felt Romanian.

Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.
Lenin still looks out over the main square in Comrat, capital of Gagauzia.

When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991 and the Moldavian S.S.R. declared independence as the Republic of Moldova, Romania became Moldova’s first and warmest ally; Moldovans and Romanians tend to consider themselves one nation. One would think that this would be the time to realize the dream of a united Romania. But any talk of eventual reunification is dampened by a separatist movement in Moldova that has proved intractable for twenty years: the Pridnestrovian Moldavian Republic, also called Transnistria. This is the eastern sliver of Moldova whose ethnic population is about a third Ukrainian, a third Russian, and a third Moldovan (i.e. Romanian). The Slavic (Russian-plus-Ukrainian) majority declared this ridiculously slender shard of land a sovereign state in 1990 when the U.S.S.R. imploded, and its independence, though unrecognized by any except other Russian (or Armenian) puppet states (Nagorno-Karabakh, Abkhazia, and South Ossetia), is maintained by the presence of thousands of Russian troops.

This ad targeting foreign investors shows Gagauzia’s current flag in front of the Moldovan one.
(The Moldovan flag is simply the Romanian tricolor with the Moldovan national seal in the center.)

Currently, as discussed earlier in this blog, Transnistria is a frozen conflict, and thus Romanian–Moldovan reunification is stalled as well. Romania does not want to absorb Moldova if this means that it would suddenly have uninvited Russian troops on its territory; in fact, under the rules of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), which Romania joined in 2004, that would put NATO on an immediate and automatic war footing with Russia, which no one in the world wants. Meanwhile, if Moldova tried to retake Moldova militarily, it would test Russia’s commitment to defending it—and, because of the NATO issue, Romania would stay out of the fight at all costs. That would mean that Transnistria would likely absorb Moldova, while the world looked on helplessly. Thus the standoff.

The traditional Gagauzian flag. Now this is the one they should use if they declare independence, right? Though that wolf looks not quite fierce enough, and a bit like the fox from The Little Prince or something.

So most talk of Romanian–Moldovan unification is merely nationalist bluster. Or is it? Romania is in the midst of an ugly constitutional crisis, the sort where jingoism finds its voice. Popular Romanian populist nationalism could spur Slavic anger and vice versa, ad bellum—and, indeed, Gagauzia could be part of this cycle too. Gagauz in the early years of Moldovan independence first had their unilateral declaration of an autonomous republic annulled, and did not fight that. Then they saw their support for a three-way Moldovan–Transnistrian–Gagauz federation sidelined. Finally, they benefitted when Moldova came around to granting them autonomy—without republic status, however, and with a territory that is a cluster of slivers of territory in the country’s far south (see map, above). But nationalist feelings have never gone away in Gagauz communities. Just last month, a diplomatic visit to Moldova by Germany’s chancellor, Angela Merkel, was disrupted by a Gagauz who threw a Molotov cocktail at her motorcade.

Angela Merkel arrives in Moldova.
Flowers and folk tapestries now; cocktails will be thrown later.

The Gagauz would have everything to lose from Romanian–Moldovan unification, since Romania’s hypernationalists would not countenance the high degree of autonomy the Gagauz have in Moldova today, and the Gagauz would be a far smaller share of the population. They may be too isolated, put-upon, and paranoid at this point to realize that the unification talk is talk only. But if they react with true secessionist spirit, it could push Moldova to repress them to the point where separation looks genuinely appealing. And Transnistria, after all, has survived the decades since the Cold War, without apparently feeling that they would be better off Moldovan. True, Gagauzia would need Russian military and economic military support to follow a similar path, but with the right diplomacy Russia may just be willing to offer that—whether through Gagauzian unification with Transnistria as an expanded sliver of Moldova, or as its own state.

Gagauzia’s coat of arms

Far stranger things have happened in post-Communist eastern Europe. This is one situation to keep an eye on.

[Also, for those who are wondering, yes, this blog is tied in with a forthcoming book, a sort of encyclopedic atlas to be published by Auslander and Fox under the title Let’s Split! A Complete Guide to Separatist Movements, Independence Struggles, Breakaway Republics, Rebel Provinces, Pseudostates, Puppet States, Tribal Fiefdoms, Micronations, and Do-It-Yourself Countries, from Chiapas to Chechnya and Tibet to Texas. Look for it in spring 2013. I will be keeping readers posted of further publication news.]

Springtime of Nations