Unawarded Performances
>> at the Andrejs Upīts Memorial Museum
Before 1990 not many people in Istanbul were aware of the Gagauz people the Orthodox Christian community that lives in Southern Moldavia who are of Turkic descent whose ethno-genesis lies with the tribes that inhabited the plains of Central Asia and spoke pure Balkan Turkish Being under the dominion of the Byzantine, Seljuks, Ottoman, Bulgarians, Romanians and Russians during their history they were obliged to live with resistance against the linguistic, religious and cultural externalisations and pressures.
In the last decade of the 20th Century
with radical changes in regimes, they again were initiated by
waves of immigration and their knowledge of language became
a privilege for their women, in finding illegal jobs in Turkey as
maidservants.
By the beginning of 2005
in southern Moldavian cities like Komrat
Cadyr Lunga or Vulkanesthy
nearly every family had one woman member
working in Istanbul under illegal conditions.