Gagauz Autonomous Region President Evghenia Gutul, who came to Istanbul for the Union of Turkish World Municipalities (TDBB) Board of Directors Meeting and 20th Anniversary Reception, met with TDBB President Uğur İbrahim Altay and Secretary General Fahri Solak on October 20, 2023.

Gagauzia President Evghenia Gutul congratulated TDBB’s 20th Anniversary during the meeting. Gutul said, “This is my second visit to Turkey after being elected. Türkiye helped Gagauzia a lot. Gagauzia has a population of around 134 thousand. We want to improve Gagauzia-Türkiye relations and do more projects. Your experience is very important to us. Türkiye built the Recep Tayyip Erdoğan stadium in Gagauzia. A Turkish College was also built in Moldova, but this college has not been put into use yet. We expect your support to open this school as soon as possible. Many investors from Turkey are opening workplaces in Gagauzia, but we do not have qualified people to work in these workplaces. Therefore, we request Turkey to educate our people on this issue. We demand that the Turkish language be taught in Gagauzia. We invite you to the Comrat festival on November 4th. This festival has an important place to promote Gagauz culture. “We would like to host one of the TDBB Board of Directors meetings,” she said.

TDBB President Uğur İbrahim Altay also said, “We can visit Gagauzia after the local elections to be held in Turkey in March 2024. As TDBB, we support the project of popularizing Turkish. We are ready to support the development of Turkish and Gagauz languages in Gagauzia. We ask from you to attend board meetings regularly. This way, our relations will be closer,” he said.