Stepan Topal

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Stepan Mikhailovich Topal ( Russian Степан Михайлович Топал * 18th January 1938 ; † 29. September 2018 ) was a politician of the autonomous region of Gagauzia in Moldova .

The current autonomous status of his home region is largely due to Topal's work. When the Soviet Union fell apart, Gagauzia split off from the Republic of Moldova under his leadership in 1990, but was peacefully reintegrated into Moldova four years later, also under his leadership, after the region had previously been guaranteed extensive special rights.

Life

Born in 1938 Stepan Topal came from the ethnic group of the Gagauz , a Christian Turkic people whose settlements, the region of Gagauzia , located in present-day Moldavia. The studied civil engineer was active in the Communist Party during the Soviet Union .

When the Soviet Union began to show increasingly strong signs of disintegration from the end of the 1980s , a national movement based on Romania emerged in the Moldovan republic . There was a sharp rise in anti-minority and nationalist tendencies across Moldova; In 1989 Russian was abolished as the second official language, and in 1990 the nationalist party Frontul Popular din Moldova finally took power after elections. She tried to achieve a quick exit from the Soviet Union, a cultural Romanization and a possible connection of the country to Romania .

Minorities such as Russians, Ukrainians, Bulgarians and Gagauz as well as parts of the Moldovan population were opposed to the new, nationalist politics and saw their rights as threatened. In addition, minorities were mostly concentrated in a few regions of Moldova, in which they made up the majority. These included in particular the eastern part of the country, Transnistria , the city of Bălți , the Taraclia region and Gagauzia . Civil rights groups were formed to demand the reintroduction of Russian as the official language, and there were demonstrations and strikes.

In Gagauzia, Stepan Topal led a protest movement that first demanded more autonomy for the region, and later the country's complete independence from the Republic of Moldova. In the fall of 1990 in today's Gagauz capital Comrat the Gagauz Soviet Socialist Republic was proclaimed, which initially tried to break away from Moldavia, but to remain as a separate Soviet republic in the Soviet Union. On October 31, 1990, Stepan Topal was elected chairman of the Supreme Soviet of Gagauzia, i.e. its head of government.

When the Soviet Union finally dissolved at the end of 1991, this de facto state was renamed the Republic of Gagauzia and tried to achieve full independence as an independent state. Topal became the first president of Gagauzia (Gagauz Başkan ) on December 1st . In the same month, Igor Smirnov was elected president in Transnistria, which had also split off from Moldova .

However, since Gagauzia's independence was not recognized internationally and more moderate political currents ruled in Moldova, negotiations between the governments of Gagauzia and Moldova began in 1994. Moldova worked out a new constitution, which guaranteed extensive autonomy for Gagauzia, among other things with its own government and Gagauz and Russian as regional official languages. After the Moldovan parliament had approved these changes, the Gagauz government around Stepan Topal agreed to a return of Gagauz to Moldova. This was confirmed in December 1994.

In May 1995 there were new presidential elections in Gagauzia, in which Topal lost to Georgiy Tabunşçik . On June 19, 1995, he handed over the official business to his successor.

After being voted out of office, he was still politically active and ran again unsuccessfully in the Gagauz presidential elections in 2002. From 2010 he was active in the region's council of elders.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Gagauzların ilk cumhurbaşkanı Stepan Topal Ankara'da anıldı. In: orhaajans.com. October 5, 2018, accessed February 8, 2019 (Turkish).
  2. ^ The Moldovans: Romania, Russia, and the Politics of Culture by Charles King
  3. ↑ Parlons Gagaouze: Une langue de Moldavie of Güllü Karanfil
  4. ↑ http://www.people.su/108942
  5. ^ Topal at elections in Gagauzia
  6. ^ Topal in the council of elders in Gagauzia
personal data
SURNAME Topal, Stepan
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Topal, Stepan Mikhailovich (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Gagauz politician
DATE OF BIRTH January 18, 1938
DATE OF DEATH 29th September 2018