Flag of Gagauzia
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| Name | Sky Flag |
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| Use | State flag |
| Proportion | 1:2 |
| Adopted | October 31, 1995 |
Variant flag of Flag of Gagauzia
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| Use | Civil flag |
Variant flag of Flag of Gagauzia
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| Use | Ethnic flag |
The flag of Gagauzia (Gagauz: Gagauz Yerin bayraa) has served as the Gagauz Republic's flag since 1995, recognized as a regional symbol by Moldova. Several other ethnic and unofficial flags were recorded for Gagauzia before and after the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991.
The current "national flag" of Gagauzia has "a blue field bearing a narrow white and red horizontal stripes on the bottom and three yellow stars on the upper hoist." Reportedly, the three stars stand for "the past, present and future", or, alternatively, for the three constituent municipalities of Gagauzia: Comrat (Komrat), Ceadîr-Lunga (Çadır-Lunga), and Vulcănești (Valkaneş).
The flag replaced earlier designs with a grey wolf (bozkurt) or wolf's head, which remain popular as alternative symbols, and were notably in use under Governor Stepan Topal (1990–1995). According to reports of the time, the imagery recalls "a myth of the Gagauz people's founding", when "a wolf led [the Gagauz] to freedom." Other readings see it as a Pan-Turkic symbol, namely as "the legendary grey wolf that led the Turks across the mountains onto the steppes." Researcher Anatol Măcriș claims that the ancient Gagauz flag had "a wolf on a green field", and proposes that it may derive from the Dacian Draco.
The Gagauz trace their origins to the Despotate of Dobruja, being a Turkic or Turkified Christian people which resisted the spread of Islam. Chased out of the Ottoman Empire, they were accepted by the Russian Empire, which settled them in Bessarabia and the Budjak; most of the latter was returned to Moldavia in 1856, together with its Gagauz, but re-annexed by Russia in 1878. Gagauzia first expressed aspirations of becoming an independent nation in the wake of the 1905 Revolution: a small republic, called Gagauz Khalki or "Comrat Republic", survived for two weeks in January 1906. Although cited as a precedent by later nationalists, this polity was mainly concerned with land reform, rather than ethnic self-determination.
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