From the Macedonian Tribune (Fort Wayne Indiana emigrant publication):
US first uses real name on July 2
On July 2 the US signed a bilateral agreement with the Republic of
Macedonia, dropping the use of "the former Yugoslav" [Rep. of Mac.]
Greece was up in arms with its foreign minister sending a message to
Secretary of State Colin Powell and chiding Macedonia for signing the
agreement which exempts American soldiers from the jurisdiction of the
International Criminal Court. [Be patient, these paragraphs really are
related].
The bilateral accord came after the US suspended $47 million in
military aid to countries that refused to sign the agreement which the EU and
the Council of Europe lobbied against.
Greece rejects name
In late June at the UN, the Greek government announced it will accept
no other name for the Republic of Macedonia other than Former Yugoslav
Republic of Macedonia.
[They have been refusing to recognize a name used since around 1950. I
suspect there are a few Macedonia's around the US as well, but Greece has not
complained about them. Greece claims to own the name because of Philip of
Macedon - who was probably not an ethnic Greek, just a conqueror.]
18 responses total.
Philip of Macedon was an ethnic Greek. From the Region of Greece known in English as Macedonia. Greece fears that the independent Macedonia has designs on Greek Macedonia. I wonder if the South Riding of Tipperary, Ireland, has designs on the South Riding of Yorkshire?
..7000 macedonians in full battle array!
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Send in one texan to threaten to replace the sheep with beefs.
How do you prove anyone who died thousands of years ago was an ethnic Greek?
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RE#5 Phillip's son Alexander the Great created a dialect of greek known as "kione" This is opposed to classical greek or the "attic" as it is called. He must have had some sort of greek roots.
Re #5 Sindi: the Macedonians were a greek tribe, they spoke a greek dialect; they considered themselves greeks. beyond that, you have no option but to rely on the historical record, or what you can glean from those that conflict. Re #6 - face down, nine-edge first? Re #7 _ That's "Attic" as in "Attica", the region around Athens.
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The main point of what I posted was that the US is bribing countries to ignore when its soldiers act like criminals.
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In Greece today, it is illegal to call yourself Macedonian. Some folks who started a newspaper called "The Macedonian" were all sent to prison. Macedonia was a province of the Ottoman Empire. When the empire collapsed, Macedonia was split in half by the League of Nations, and the southern half given as a protectorate to Greece (the area including the city of Salonika, now called Thessalonika), the northern half to Serbia (the area including the city of Skopje). The population of Macedonia (like much of the Ottoman Empire) was pretty polyglot; probably Bulgars were the largest group. However, the Greeks decreed that from now on, the territory was to be called "Northern Greece," and everybody there had to be Greek. Everyone was required to have a Greek name and use only the Greek language. All place names were changed from Slavic names to Greek names. This new regime was enforced brutally, and a great many of the former inhabitants of the area fled, many of them to Bulgaria. Greece does not allow any of these people to return, even to visit: anyone who gives their birthplace as one of the former Slavic place names of northern Greece is not allowed to enter Greece. Meanwhile, the Serbs were much less effective at Serbifying their half of Macedonia, which eventually became the Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia. Tito and others encouraged the Macedonians to have an ethnic identity distinct from the Bulgarians, and obtained recognition for Macedonian as a distinct language. (Bulgarians insisted it was just a "Western Bulgarian dialect.") But despite the ethnic kinship between Bulgaria and the main ethnic group in the Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, the events of World War II (when Bulgaria was given control over Macedonia by the Nazis) made the Bulgars even more unpopular, and helped promote the idea that the Macedonians were a separate group. When Yugoslavia began to show signs of breaking up, there was an expectation of war over the Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia. Bulgaria still felt that it was entitled to the entire region, and fury still burned over what the Greeks did. Greece announced that any nation called Macedonia was automatically a threat to its territorial integrity, and changed the name of "Northern Greece" to "Macedonia". Albania was concerned about the hundreds of thousands of ethnic Albanians in the territory. And Serbia, ruled by Communists-turned-extreme-nationalists, was getting ready to create Greater Serbia by force. But just as several Yugoslav republics were declaring independence, the EC managed to call a cease fire and set up a commission to determine how and when and whether to recognize independent states. Of course everyone wanted EC recognition, so they got the attention of all the republics. And they started out the right way, coming up with reasonable standards, including guarantees of free press and protection of ethnic minorities. Unfortunately, the leaders of the EC were busy with the Maastricht currency negotiations. And considerations of assisting a peaceful settlement in Yugoslavia became extremely secondary to those negotiations. And so Germany, having just given a currency-system concession, demanded in return that Croatia be recognized despite the fact that it had not met the standards the EC had articulated. Hans-Dietrich Genschler is the villain behind this action, which led directly to a deadly and destructive war. Meanwhile, Greece demanded that Macedonia NOT be recognized, despite the fact that it alone among the republics had met the criteria for recognition and support. Worse yet, Greece closed its border with Macedonia in an attempt to strangle the Macedonian economy. Note that Macedonia, the former Yugoslav republic, is a tiny, landlocked nation, surrounded by unfriendly neighbors (Serbia on the north, Albania on the west, Bulgaria on the east, Greece on the South). Greece is a NATO member and an economic and military superpower by comparison. Macedonia was incredibly lucky to have Kiro Gligorov as its leader. Against all odds, he just about singlehandedly managed to prevent war from breaking out. (For his efforts, he was nearly killed by a car bomb.) Why has Greece responded with such paranoid and thuggish tactics, unworthy of a NATO democracy, to its tiny and relatively helpless neighbor? Nobody (except maybe a few elderly refugees in Sofia) really wants to take away any territory from Greece, or undo what the Greeks did in southern Macedonia. What's done is done, and it's astonishing how the beneficiaries seem to be the last ones to get over it. Obviously Greeks (just like the Turks) would prefer to pretend that the brutal events of the early 20th century didn't really happen. But the pretense leads to such hysterical oversensitivity that Greece looks ridiculous in the eyes of the world.
Have the Greeks and Turks resolved to leave Cyprus alone?
Bulgaria is currently a friendly neighbor. You mean 'Bulgarians' not 'Bulgars'. The Bulgars were some (Turkic?) tribe that was briefly in control of the area around a thousand years ago. Bulgaria also got a 'half' of the former Turkish Macedonia and they have been pretty good recently about allowing people to be ethnic Macedonians. About a million people got displaced from/in Northern Greece during the civil war, not just to Bulgaria. Lots of Turks left for Turkey. Lots of ethnic Greeks (whose ancestors were there for a few thousand years) left the Aegean coast of Turkey for Greece. Most of the Macedonians fled. Lots of Macedonian orphans went to all over Eastern Europe (I met one from Romania). 30,000 went to Uzbekistan. It was not until the 60s that the ethnic Macedonians from Greece were welcome in Slavic Macedonia (where they were settled in areas that were mostly Albanian - another stupid move).. People started to return to Greece around 1981. There is a problem of who owns property. Only ethnic Greeks were allowed back (political refugees). Greece will allow refugees (including Macedonian?) to visit Greece for 20 days from Aug 10 through Oct. 30. People have been punished for speaking Macedonian in Greece.
Sorry about getting Bulgar/Bulgarian wrong. Thanks for the additional info.
Also agreed that Bulgaria's policy in the region since 1989 has been unexpectedly reasonable. I meant "unfriendly" only in the context of Bulgaria's (at least theoretical) territorial and ethnic identity claims against Macedonia, which used to seem like a very big deal.
Did the persecution of the Northern Greeks/Greek Macedonian occur under the military dictatorship? Re #13: No; that's still unresolved. Greece has threatened to veto the entry of all ten prospective EU members unless Cyprus is allowed to enter; The leader of the Cypriot Turks has refused to sign an agreement which would give the whole of Cyprus a Swiss-style constitution, with the Greek and Turkish parts separate "cantons". Apparently he has done this in spite of public pressure to approve it. So at the moment, it loks as if Greek Cyprus (the Greek part of the internationally-recognised Republic of Cyprus) is going to enter w/o Turkish Cyprus. No doubt thi swil just make things even worse.
Thanks; that's about what I thought.
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