Scattered in foreign lands after uprisings, wars and redrawing of borders, Bulgarian historical communities still keep their Bulgarian identity alive by preserving the language, transmitting family memories and venerating traditions. And they are still very eager to get in touch with Bulgaria.

"Hello,

My name is Alexey Ivanov and I am a Gagauz of Bulgarian origin. I hope that my call will be seen by the President, the Prime Minister and all competent state authorities responsible for the verification and issuance of Bulgarian citizenship..."

If we delete the name from this appeal, it could be written by any Gagauz person who is trying to gain recognition for their Bulgarian origin in their ancestral homeland. According to historians, the Gagauz are a Turkic-speaking ethnographic group who are Eastern Orthodox Christians that fled with today's Bessarabian Bulgarians from Bulgarian lands during the Ottoman Empire in the 19^th century. Banished by the Ottoman threat, they settled in the Russian Empire, mainly in Bessarabia, now divided between Ukraine and Moldova.

Alexey Ivanov says that he has submitted all the required documents for obtaining Bulgarian citizenship, including the birth certificate of his mother. But for some time now on the website of the Directorate of Bulgarian Citizenship he reads the following: "If you do not submit the documents in time, your file will be considered at a meeting of the Citizenship Council with an opinion that the application should not be respected."

This message of application status has appeared in the application process to all Gagauz of Bulgarian origin in the last half year, he writes in a letter to the Bulgarian National Radio.

A similar story is shared by Svetlana Telpiz. Her parents also applied for Bulgarian citizenship on the basis of Bulgarian origin, but three months later their status was changed to that of Alexey Ivanov. Svetlana herself is also fighting an invisible enemy in the face of the Bulgarian state.

"In 2017, I submitted documents to the Bulgarian consulate in Chișinău and a year later I received confirmation of my Bulgarian origin," she said. “Based on this document in 2019 I again applied to the consulate to apply for citizenship. I appeared in an interview in which they were interested in my nationality, in my relatives with Bulgarian citizenship - my older sister received citizenship in 2003 on the basis of Bulgarian origin. It has been three years since I submitted the documents, and I still do not have the final status for their review. My middle sister has also been treated with silence for three years.”

When asked what caused this procrastination, Svetlana Telpiz received an answer at the consulate that the new Bulgarian government interprets the laws differently and no longer recognizes the Gagauz as Bulgarians. At the same time, however, the website of the Bulgarian Ministry of Justice continues to contain the scientific opinion of the Advisory Board of the State Agency for Bulgarians Abroad, according to which Gagauz are of Bulgarian origin and their applications for citizenship should be treated equally with those of the other Bulgarians.

In a response from the Ministry of Justice received in our editorial office, the allegation of a different interpretation of the Law on Bulgarians Abroad by the current government is described as "speculation". Hence they refer to amended texts in the law in 2021, according to which a mandatory condition for the acquisition of Bulgarian citizenship on the basis of Bulgarian origin is the certification of kinship with at least one person up to the third ascending degree of Bulgarian origin – one can see a photocopy of the answer from the ministry on our Facebook page. And this, according to Svetlana Telpiz, is the first document on the basis of which all Bulgarian Gagauz have started their application.

In a specially created forum, the Gagauz people who aspire to obtain Bulgarian citizenship express their disappointment with the fact that although they are Bulgarians by blood and origin, they cannot live in the historical homeland of their grandparents. They are ready to do anything so they could fulfil the cherished dream of generations ago and return to their roots as soon as possible.

English version Rositsa Petkova