The Existence of a Macedonian Minority in Greece!

[TrueMacedonian]

Jason BoreUs I think that you trying to steer this topic off-topic is not only a pitiful attempt at skating around the issue at hand, but also a disgraceful act at denying the obvious. Which is the existence of a Macedonian minority in your toilet bowl of a country.

[JasonBoris]

I am not avoiding any answer.
If you follow, the answers are there.

[TrueMacedonian]

Jason BoreUs you did it again. Skating around the topic and trying to take the topic off-topic.

am not avoiding any answer.
If you follow, the answers are there.

Your propaganda is poor and pathetic like your countrymen.

[TrueMacedonian]

From the Republic of Turkey's Ministry of Foreign Affairs;

http://www.mfa.gov.tr/denial-of-ethnic-identity.en.mfa

Denial of Ethnic Identity

General Situation:

The Greek Nation is based on the principle of belonging to the Greek race and the Greek Orthodox Church. On this subject, it is enough to glance at the speeches of the Greek statesmen about the "homogeneity of the Greek nation with the exception of the Muslim minority." These are out-dated concepts.

There are plenty of reports issued by the International Human Rights Organizations documenting the persecution of the Turkish Minority in Western Thrace.

If the Greek Nation is really homogeneous, one can not help but wonder about the destiny of the Albanians, the Muslim Albanians, Vlahs, Macedonians, Bulgarians, Jews as well as the Turks.

In this respect, it becomes necessary to answer the question of how homogeneity has been achieved in Greek Macedonia while ethnic variety still survives in the Republic of Macedonia.

The very existence of a Turkish Minority is officially denied in Greece. Indeed any allusion to it is punishable by law. The post office refuses to accept written communications that contain any reference to the Turkish identity of the Minority. Government leaders, even the Parliament, turn down petitions on behalf of the Minority when addressed in the name of the "Turkish" Minority.

Lawsuits were filed against the leaders of the Turkish Minority the late Dr. Sadık Ahmet and Ibrahim Serif, during the elections of 1989, for distributing campaign leaflets that referred to the Minority as Turkish.

Many members of the Turkish Minority were prosecuted during local elections on October 16, 1994 for having used the word "Turkish" in their campaign documents.

The Greek Government asserted in the years of 1954 and 1955 that the Minority was originated from the Turkish race, but later, changed its mind.

The methods which Greece uses to destroy the ethnic identity of the minority are described in the report "Destroying Ethnic Identity - The Turks of Greece" published by "Helsinki Watch" in 1990.

Human Rights Watch report of 1999 is also indicative of the problems faced by the Turkish Minority.

The Turkish identity of the minority has been established in several ways. The instruction which was conveyed to the subordinate departments by the General Secretary of Thrace, Fesopulos in 1954, saying that the minority should be called as the "Turkish Minority" must also be mentioned. This notice was repeated one year later in 1955.

Moreover, according to the provisions of the Agreement on the Exchange of Turkish and Greek Populations on January 30, 1923, the people of Greek and Turkish origin who were left out of the exchange procedure were given "Etabli Documents" . These documents mentioned their ethnic origin as Greek and Turkish.

At the international level, the document of the League of Nations submitted to the Council on December 23, 1924 and remarked C. 774 on the " Minorities of Turkish Race In Western Thrace", should also be cited.

Greek courts also have outlawed the use of the term 'Turkish Minority'. In 1988, the Greek High Court upheld a 1986 decision by the Court of Appeals of Thrace shutting down the Turkish Teachers Union of Western Thrace. The Court held that the word "Turkish" referred to citizens of Turkey and that the use of the word "Turkish" to describe Greek Moslems endangered public order. This decision led to vigorous protests from the Turkish Minority. As a result of the High Court's decision, most Turkish associations have remained closed.

In this context, the banning of the Turkish Minority associations; namely, the “Western Thrace Turkish Teacher’s Union”, the “Komotini Turkish Youth Association” and the “Turkish Union of Xanthi” has continued until today. Following the exhaustion of the internal remedies, the case concerning the banning of the Turkish Union of Xanthi was taken to the ECHR by the Minority. Also the efforts to establish the “Rodopi Turkish Woman Association” and the “Evros Prefecture Minority Youth Association” proved futile based on the same pretexts of the Greek authorities and these cases were also taken to the ECHR by the Minority.

The European Court of Human Rights expressed its decision, in a press release dated 11 October 2007, regarding the “Evros Prefecture Minority Youth Association”, to which Greek authorities failed to give the necessary permission. The Court held unanimously that there had been a violation of Article 11 (freedom of assembly and association) of the European Convention on Human Rights.

The decision became effective as of 11 January 2008.

The European Court of Human Rights also expressed its decision concerning the “Turkish Union of Xanthi” and the “Rodopi Turkish Women’s Association” on 27 March 2008.

The Court held unanimously that there had been a violation of Article 11 (freedom of assembly and association) of the European Convention on Human Rights in both aforementioned cases. The Court also held unanimously that there had been a violation of Article 6 & 1 (right to a fair hearing within a reasonable time) of the Convention. In the case of the “Turkish Union of Xanthi”, the Court awarded the said association 8000 Euros in respect of non-pecuniary damage.

These decisions once again prove the restrictions imposed by the Greek administration not only on the freedom of assembly and association but also on the right to express ethnic identity.


Republic of Turkey Ministry of Foreign Affairs

Thank you to the UMD for providing us with this information.

[Daskalot]

JasonBoris, you are posting direct quotes from a known Greek propaganda website namely:

http://www.macedonian-heritage.gr/FAQ.html

I will give you a warning for that, next time you do it you will be permanently BANNED, you have been warned.

I will also edit your replies, which are not relevant to the above topic and considered to be propaganda.

[TrueMacedonian]

page 313

[JasonBoris]

I am offering a step by step, argument and proof based thesis,
of who are the Macedonians,(their language, herritage ets- which btw also includes you people as Macedonians!!!-
and an answer of who was speaking what language in Northern Greece)
and all you have to say is swear at my country (which incidentally has nothing to do with what I post), and call me names..

It just shows that making a constructive, peaceful, enlightening for all conversation with some of you is next to impossible,
with the exception of some other, more open minds in here..

PS: This is not propaganda, it is an unbiased, ethnological, well substanciated thesis, which shows our common heritage,
but also our differences)

If you can not accept what it says, which is spot on, than the fascists and stuborn ones rest on your side of the fence.

[Risto the Great]

JB, you have Greeks and you have Macedonians. Only recently could this be considered confusing. And this confusion is being propagated by the Greeks for their benefit. Any other myths that you would like to perpetuate are not welcome here.

[Daskalot]

I am offering a step by step, argument and proof based thesis,
of who are the Macedonians,(their language, herritage ets- which btw also includes you people as Macedonians!!!-
and an answer of who was speaking what language in Northern Greece)
and all you have to say is swear at my country (which incidentally has nothing to do with what I post), and call me names..

It just shows that making a constructive, peaceful, enlightening for all conversation with some of you is next to impossible,
with the exception of some other, more open minds in here..

PS: This is not propaganda, it is an unbiased, ethnological, well substanciated thesis, which shows our common heritage,
but also our differences)

If you can not accept what it says, which is spot on, than the fascists and stuborn ones rest on your side of the fence.

So with the information that you provided do you consider us as ethnic Macedonians speaking the Macedonian language? Yes or No?

[JasonBoris]

So with the information that you provided do you consider us as ethnic Macedonians speaking the Macedonian language? Yes or No?

Depends what you mean by ethnic Macedonian, and what you consider the Macedonian language to be.

Can you be more specific?
The Balkans, its ethnicities and its languages, is quite a complex issue to cover with a yes or no.

And if I am off topic, please move this or make another thread
to cover this issue.

[Daskalot]

Depends what you mean by ethnic Macedonian, and what you consider the Macedonian language to be.

Can you be more specific?
The Balkans, its ethnicities and its languages, is quite a complex issue to cover with a yes or no.

And if I am off topic, please move this or make another thread
to cover this issue.

Oh it is very simple, there are no two ways around that question. You did not answer my question, thus you are negating our existence as a people and our language.

I will hereby promote you with a permanent BAN, I hope you enjoyed your stay.

[George S.]

Jason spare us your crap i had to watch your Muppet show,we don't need that on this forum.You making all these wild claims go ahead write it & well'check it out ,But keep the muppets out of the Macedonian issue.The MTO is a serious forum i don't find the suffering of the Macedonian people funny.So if that is your angle you better go to another forum.

[TrueMacedonian]

[TrueMacedonian]

An old article but still very relevant.

http://www.historyofmacedonia.org/MacedonianGreekConflict/GreeceUnworthyEUmember.html

Greece is an Unworthy EU Member
by Gunnar Nissen
Danish newspaper Morgaenavisen Jyllands-Posten 2/26/1999

If this chronicle gives rise to conflicts or trouble, it is not the fault of the Macedonians, nor me. When the politicians in EU countries don't speak out, it is due to ignorance or indifference. Denmark is a member of the EU. It remains a mystery that Greece is too. The member countries must recognize human rights and minorities rights. Those are the demands put in front of the central European states and they must abide by them. That has been hard on Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania who are brought to recognize national minorities, especially that large Russian one. Slovenia is on that point influenced by the Yugoslavian constitution of 1974, an exemplary country with full recognition of small Croatian and Italian minorities. But Greece - Oh Dear! From official Greek side it is bombastically announced: Only Greeks live in Greece. Nonsense! In southeast Europe, not a single state exist of one nationality alone. In Greece, you find a large Turkish minority (who do not wish to be presented as Greeks that has converted to Islam) in Thrace, a small Albanian minority in Epiros and finally a Macedonian minority in Aegean Macedonia, who numbers somewhere between 75.000 and 500.000. An exact estimate doesn't exist, since Greece persistently deny there existence.

If one put some pressure on high ranking civil servants and self-proclaimed experts, one may achieve an admission that "a small Slavic speaking minority exist in Greek Macedonia", but they "do not wish to be a national minority; they can freely use their language". A pack of lies! For many years I have had a friendly relation with numerous Macedonians in Aegean Macedonia - a people that officially doesn't exist. I do speak Greek, but I speak fluently Macedonian. Almost every time I take the train south, over Munich to Balkan, I run into Macedonians from Greece (2. generation of workers). The same happens when I traverse the Greek border. Some people speaks only Greek, but a lot, really a lot, speaks additionally Macedonian ("our mother tongue") which is forbidden as language in school. Last year a couple of shop owners were taken to court -their "crime" was that they had written some words in Macedonian in their shop windows.

When I sit on cafe's in villages in Aegean Macedonia, the conversation always ends at "the Macedonian identity". "What do you in the rest of Europe know about us?" I must admit that it's very little. "We would like to have some Macedonian schools" the man continues at the cafe. "I speak my Macedonian mother tongue, but my son is struggling, although he watches Macedonian TV, Televizija Skopje". He, and the others speak in a low voice, while glancing towards the neighboring table where a man is picking up his phone. Moments later, two angry police officers enter and the gathering around my table splits up. The border control between the Macedonian Republic and Greece are, known to be among the toughest in Europe. Certainly the slowest. Not on the Macedonian side, where the border police take a peek at the Danish passport, after which it's over. But on the other side of the border, the border police confiscate all passports and later we have to spend a long time, be it snow storm or bumming hot, cueing to get the passport back. With particular thoroughness, the custom control ransack the luggage of travelers from the Republic of Macedonia. Foreigners can not be sure to get a travel permission, even when born in Aegean Macedonia in Greece. It has happened that a Canadian bus full of Macedonians with Macedonian names, but born in Aegean Macedonia, were not allowed to enter the country.

When it in 1991 was clear to the Macedonians in the Yugoslav sub-republic Macedonia, that their value norms could not possibly harmonize with the roaring nationalism of Serbia, they split with the Yugoslav republic after a popular referendum - Slovenia, Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina had already done that. The Serbs protested and the Serbian terrorist leader and specialist in ethnic cleansing Vojislav Seselj announced that all he needed was two divisions and then "the Macedonian problem would be solved". Loudest, however, were the protests from Greece, apparently because of the name. The Greek regime could perhaps accept that the new state could call it self Skopje (after it's capital) and the Greeks postulated wildly and crazily that the Macedonian state with it's 2.1 Mio, inhabitants and an army smaller than our national guard might attack it's large neighbor Greece.

The Greeks gave as a reason for not recognizing the Republic of Macedonia, that " we have a Macedonia here in Greece and thus there cannot be a Macedonia just on the opposite site of the border". The logic in this is absurd and I'm ashamed that so many ignorant journalists quoted the Greek reason without comments. Apparently they were unaware that Macedonia is split between three different countries. After a meeting in Brussels, where the EU-recognition of the state of Macedonia was postponed, although Macedonia fulfilled all requirements for recognition, the then Danish foreign minister, Uffe Elleman-Jensen, in a final salute as EU chairman, commented to the Greeks that they had to get themselves together and get the problem solved, concerning the name Macedonia and called it despicable of the Greeks to treat the Macedonians in this way. The former Danish foreign Minister Elleman-Jensen stated in 1993 "not Macedonia is a problem for Europe, but our member Greece". The Greek spokespersons reacted violently, amongst them the former Greek vice prime-minister Athanasios Kannellopoulos, who angrily pronounced "with his comments, Mr. Jensen is a very bad example of the other foreign ministers. Mr. Jensen said that he'd be ashamed to be Greek because we're against that the new Skopje republic's use of the name Macedonia. To that my answer is: We'd be ashamed if Mr. Jensen was Greek!" In "Morgenavisen Jyllands-Posten" the MP Ame Melchior published a letter to the editor that exhibited his lack of knowledge about the populations in the Balkan peninsula under the title "Show concern for our Greek allied". He was answered by "Jyllands-Posten"s correspondent Per Nyholm "Show concern for the Macedonians". Finally the Greeks accepted the name of Macedonia, but only in the form of The Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, FYROM.

Now to the decisive point that journalists ought to have oriented "themselves about: In ancient times and in the Osmanian era, Macedonia was an area without internal borders, where the people after the 6 century had the south Slavic language Macedonian as mother tongue. It was in Macedonia the Cyrillic alphabet came to life, named after the monk Kyril. The bible was translated by the Macedonians to old-church-Slavic, that had the same influence on ecumenical language in eastern Europe as Latin had amongst the Catholics in western and central Europe. The Cyrillic alphabet spread not only to Bulgaria and Serbia, but also to Russia and other eastern Slavic countries. "Genuine" Hellenes described the ancient population of Macedonia as barbarians and Phillip II and Alexander the Great greekness are rather dubious. Albanian historiansname them Illyrians, the oldest nation on Balkan and the Albanians are arguably their ancestors. Of higher importance was the Slav's immigration to the Balkan area in the 6 century. The Slavic tribe that settled in Macedonia took name after the province and preserved their language to modem times (with some grammatical exceptions...)

After the Balkan wars of 1912 and 1913, Macedonia was split in three. Aegean Macedonia came under Greece, Vardarmacedonia under Serbia and Pirimacedonia under Bulgaria. Vardarmacedonia was in 1945 after a heroic partisan war, one of the six republics in the new federal Yugoslavia and as promised by Tito, the republic got full national and cultural independence - with due acknowledgment of it's compact Albanian and small Turkish minorities. As Yugoslavia split in 1991, the country had 23 Mio. inhabitants. Had all of Yugoslavia had the birthrate of the Albanians in western Macedonia and Kosovo, they would have been at 50 Mio! Kosovo and western Macedonia would have had to let the Albanians migrate to the rest of Serbia and Macedonia with resulting unemployment rates around 50%. The Albanians in the Republic of Macedonia are not oppressed. They have all rights - except the one to rise the Albanian flag and get an Albanian university - which wouldn't make a lot of sense as soon as they again can study at the large university in Prestina in Kosovo, Tito's pride. By the way, the ambassador of the Republic of Macedonia in Denmark is Albanian, the much respected Muhammed Halili. Could one imagine the situation: the government of the North German federated state Schleswig Holstein declare: Schleswig is German and in Germany, Germans are living. Thus with no further notice, the Danish schools, including the "Duborgskolen" high school and "Jaruplund" high school, the Flensburg newspaper, Danish libraries and other foreign institutions will close. The Danish language is declared "not-wanted"? How about the opposite situation - if everything German was forbidden in southern Denmark? Unthinkable of course!

When a person misbehaves, it is in the first line the closest people's duty to intervene. National oppression is taking place in many countries outside the EU. But Greece is an EU member and is thus a "part of the family". But do we intervene, we, the closest people? No, we shut up. Of ignorance or misunderstood solidarity with the Greek leaders, who as the Serbs, consider themselves "superbalkanian". Other people knows more about the oppression than I, but I know a great many and every year more ignored and oppressed Slavic Macedonians in the Greek part of Macedonia. Can we justify our silence? I'm sure that Greece' unwillingness to accept the Republic of Macedonia is due to their black conscience over the oppression of Macedonians in Greece. Greece is (yet another) unworthy member of the EU.

[TrueMacedonian]

A video that made Dora Bako the Arvaniti witch crap her pants and how she skates around the UMD's question on minority rights for Macedonians and other minorities in modern "greece";

YouTube - UMD President Questions Greek Foreign Minister