1934 — Good Turkish Missing covers with original end-papers. Slight tears on end-papers. Overall a good copy. Roy. 8vo. (24 x 16 cm). In Gagauz Turkish. 40, 4 p., b/w ills. First edition of this extremely rare translation in book form, which is the first comprehensive book on the Bessarabian Gagauz people, translated from the magazine "Viata Bessarabiei" in 1933... Ciachir worked for the Romanian magazine titled "Viata Basarabiei" [i.e. The life of Bessarabia] between 1933-34. Mihail Ciachir (or Çakir) was a Protoiereus and educator in the Gagauz language, and the first publisher of Gagauz books in the erstwhile Russian Empire and in the Soviet Union. Ciachir was born in the Bessarabian village of Ceadîr-Lunga, in a Gagauz deacon's family. Bessarabia is a historical region in Eastern Europe, bounded by the Dniester river on the east and the Prut river on the west. About two-thirds of Bessarabia lies within modern-day Moldova, with the Ukrainian Budjak region covering the southern coastal region and part of the Ukrainian Chernivtsi Oblast covering a small area in the north. In the aftermath of the Russo-Turkish War (1806-1812), and the ensuing Peace of Bucharest, the eastern parts of the Principality of Moldavia, an Ottoman vassal, along with some areas formerly under direct Ottoman rule, were ceded to Imperial Russia. The acquisition was among the Empire's last territorial acquisitions in Europe. The newly acquired territories were organized as the Bessarabia Governorate of the Russian Empire, adopting a name previously used for the southern plains between the Dniester and the Danube rivers. Following the Crimean War, in 1856, the southern areas of Bessarabia were returned to Moldavian rule; Russian rule was restored over the whole of the region in 1878, when Romania, the result of Moldavia's union with Wallachia, was pressured into exchanging those territories for the Dobruja. In 1917, in the wake of the Russian Revolution, the area constituted itself as the Moldavian Democratic Republic, an autonomous republic part of a proposed federative Russian state. Bolshevik agitation in late 1917 and early 1918 resulted in the intervention of the Romanian Army, ostensibly to pacify the region. Soon after, the parliamentary assembly declared independence, and then union with the Kingdom of Romania. However, the legality of these acts was disputed, most prominently by the Soviet Union, which regarded the area as a territory occupied by Romania. The Gagauz people is living mostly in southern Moldova (Gagauzia, Taraclia District, Basarabeasca District) and southwestern Ukraine (Budjak). Gagauz is mostly Eastern Orthodox Christians. The term Gagauz is also often used as a collective naming of Turkic people living in the Balkans, speaking Balkan Gagauz Turkish. The origin of the Gagauz is obscure. At the beginning of the 20th century, a Bulgarian historian counted 19 different theories about their origin. A few decades later the Gagauz ethnologist M. N. Guboglo increases the number to 21. In some of those theories, the Gagauz people are presented as descendants of the Pechenegs, Cumans-Kipchaks, or a clan of Seljuk Turks, or a mix of all. The fact that their confession is Eastern Orthodox Christianity may suggest that their ancestors already lived in the Balkans prior to the Ottoman conquest in the late 14th century. (Wikipedia). Not in OCLC.
