Macedonia & Greece: Name Issue

[Tomche Makedonche]

https://www.rferl.org/a/macedonia-greece-name-dispute-un-envoy-skopje-talks/29011488.html

UN Mediator Meets With Macedonian Leaders On Name Dispute

UN negotiator Matthew Nimetz on February 1 voiced optimism that Balkan neighbors Macedonia and Greece could resolve a name dispute that has strained relations between the two countries for more than a quarter of a century.

After talks with Macedonia's leadership in Skopje, Nimetz told reporters that officials in both countries appear highly motivated to reach a solution over the name within the next couple of months.

Nimetz held meetings with Macedonian President Gjorge Ivanov, Prime Minister Zoran Zaev, Foreign Minister Nikola Dimitrov, and party leaders.

"I am very, very optimistic. There is a window of opportunity and I think we should go forward quickly and move to solution in the next couple of months," Nimetz said after traveling to Macedonia following talks in Greece.

"[I] generally feel the process is moving forward. There is a good will on both sides to reach a solution to this long-standing problem."

The dispute broke out after Macedonia, for decades a part of the former Yugoslavia, gained independence in 1991.

Greece argues the neighbor's name implies claims on its own province of Macedonia and wants it changed. The Macedonian government denies the charge.

Greek officials are said to favor a modifier to the word Macedonia by adding "Upper," "New," or "North" to it.

UN negotiator Matthew Nimetz on February 1 voiced optimism that Balkan neighbors Macedonia and Greece could resolve a name dispute that has strained relations between the two countries for more than a quarter of a century.

'Dignified' Solution

NATO member Greece has been blocking Macedonia's accession to the alliance since 2008 until a solution is found.

Speaking alongside Nimetz, Macedonian Foreign Minister Nikola Dimitrov said Skopje wants a solution that will be "dignified" for the people in both countries -- but also a solution that would not endanger Macedonia's national identity and language.

But Dimitrov also voiced caution.

"I think the chances for us to find a way along the lines of what I talked about is by not being too explicit in the public until we have something -- both sides."

About 200 protesters gathered outside the European Union mission in Skopje during Nimetz's visit, demanding that talks be terminated.

Meanwhile, Greek Foreign Minister Nikos Kotzias said Athens would soon submit draft proposals to resolve the issue, adding that a settlement could be reached in the coming months.

Asked by Reuters what would constitute progress for Athens if the dispute with Skopje was not settled by June, Kotzias said, "It will be settled."

However, many Greeks object to any use of the word Macedonia in their neighbor's official name. A nationalist rally in the northern city of Thessaloniki drew more than 100,000 people on January 21, and a similar rally is scheduled in Athens on February 4.

The Greek Orthodox church has endorsed the rally, as well as influential organizations representing Greek communities in the United States and Canada

[Risto the Great]

About 200 protesters gathered outside the European Union mission in Skopje during Nimetz's visit, demanding that talks be terminated.

200 real Macedonians did something useful.

[Risto the Great]

UN mediator Matthew Nimetz said that issues about [Macedonian] "identity" are not part of his mandate

Changing the name of the country is his job. Therefore changing the Macedonian identity is his job.

[Carlin]

MACEDONIA IS IRANIAN !

https://www.freeinquiry.gr/single-post.php?id=4297

"Demonstrate, my brothers for Macedonia ... Skopje will never be accepted with the name Macedonia by the people's conscience," Anthimos thundered from the pulpit during his sermon. "If we only shut (access) to the port (of Thessaloniki), they're dead the following week."

http://www.businessinsider.com/ap-greeks-rally-over-name-dispute-with-neighbor-macedonia-2018-1

[Carlin]

Lol. Spartan Warriors to safeguard Macedonia protest in Athens. Pictures form their arrival at Syntagma via the Metro.

https://twitter.com/chris_avramidis/media

[mklion]

I'll be honest. Even though everyone here despises the Greeks for being so nationalistic you have to admire them in a sense at being able to protect their interests whereas we are on the doorstep of losing our name and it seems like no one in the country will even protest.

[Amphipolis]

I'll be honest. Even though everyone here despises the Greeks for being so nationalistic you have to admire them in a sense at being able to protect their interests whereas we are on the doorstep of losing our name and it seems like no one in the country will even protest.

While some of the opponents of these rallies call them nationalistic or even fascist, I wouldn't say they are so. The main speaker tomorrow is Mikis Theodorakis and the attendants come from (almost) all the political spectrum.

After the success of Thessaloniki's rally, Church has also changed position and now supports the rallies (though not so enthusiastically).

New Democracy remains divided, so we don’t know what they’ll do tomorrow.

Independent Greeks, Golden Dawn and Union of Center support the rallies and will be present.

The parties of Tsipras, the former Socialist Party (aligned now with “Soros” party, The River) and Communist Party are firmly against, though their rhetoric is less hostile now.

[Carlin]

The Thessaloniki rally was a clear display of ultra-nationalism, fanaticism, and even irredentism. In the rally, it was claimed that there are 700,000 unredeemed Greeks in Macedonia. This does not help the process in any way.

If a claim that there are 700,000 Greeks living across the northern borders is not irredentism - I don't know what is. Perhaps it should not be surprising if the figure of 700,000 goes up in the coming days?

Kathimerini article (google translate, not fully accurate obviously):

The Thessaloniki rally also highlighted an unpleasant reality: the ignorance of the Macedonian, in which the Greek society is still submerged. The story of 1991-1993, when the Greeks went down to the rallies for fear that Gligorov's armies would take us to Thessaloniki, is repeated, with the citizens seeing any retreat in the negotiation, in which we will take and give , as a sell-off of the "name Macedonia". Interference: while we move our finger to the northern neighbors, we do not seem to be particularly worried about escalating Turkish aggression in the Aegean and to rally our opposition to the eastern threat. Obviously, unlike the Turks, we are considered to be the northern neighbors of our "hand".

In these, the cloudy waters of ignorance, the emotional charging of the citizens, attempted to fish in Thessaloniki all those who were clothed in the platform - and they were crying out what (unlikely) imaginable one might imagine. If mass and pulse were terrified, as it was said, the parties, what should have made us shudder was the paraphernalia (almost) of all those who chose to inform the crowd.

Unsurprisingly aggressive speech, passionate personal peaks against those with different opinions about developments, indifference to the vulgar slogans with which organized classes welcomed the speakers' crowns, graphic approaches of the press there are 700,000 Greeks in Skopje who need to be given Greek passports, proposals "to make decisions on foreign policy matters from the" Church of the Municipality "instead of the House, the government or the Foreign Ministry.

The aim of most of them was not the briefing, but the fanaticism, the division, the conspiracy of the political system, and all the "worshipers" of those who did not agree with them. It is rumored that people like the chaos of the "anti-systemic" super-patriot aspire to rule us. Alas if all of them are the "new" that will emerge from the collapse of the "rotten treacherous political scene" which, according to those, "sells the nation out".

There is, in the end, perhaps more serious stakes: liberal bourgeois democracy. And that, let's have it in the back of our minds that we applaud them ...

http://www.kathimerini.gr/946568/opinion/epikairothta/politikh/neos-dixasmos-epi-8yrais

Macedonia and rightwing banality: history as myth machine

https://www.opendemocracy.net/can-europe-make-it/annagiulia-della-puppa/macedonia-and-rightwing-banality-history-as-myth-machine

"... Konstantinos Mitsotakis, one of the most important right wing Greek politicians of all time, once said about Slavophones in Greece: “I was so happy to get rid of them, I would never want them back”."

[maco2envy]

In the rally, it was claimed that there are 700,000 unredeemed Greeks in Macedonia.

So according to these people, approximately a quarter of the population in R.Macedonia are Greeks. The Greeks aren't sending their best lol.

[Solun]

The Thessaloniki rally was a clear display of ultra-nationalism, fanaticism, and even irredentism. In the rally, it was claimed that there are 700,000 unredeemed Greeks in Macedonia. This does not help the process in any way.

If a claim that there are 700,000 Greeks living across the northern borders is not irredentism - I don't know what is. Perhaps it should not be surprising if the figure of 700,000 goes up in the coming days?

Kathimerini article (google translate, not fully accurate obviously):

The Thessaloniki rally also highlighted an unpleasant reality: the ignorance of the Macedonian, in which the Greek society is still submerged. The story of 1991-1993, when the Greeks went down to the rallies for fear that Gligorov's armies would take us to Thessaloniki, is repeated, with the citizens seeing any retreat in the negotiation, in which we will take and give , as a sell-off of the "name Macedonia". Interference: while we move our finger to the northern neighbors, we do not seem to be particularly worried about escalating Turkish aggression in the Aegean and to rally our opposition to the eastern threat. Obviously, unlike the Turks, we are considered to be the northern neighbors of our "hand".

In these, the cloudy waters of ignorance, the emotional charging of the citizens, attempted to fish in Thessaloniki all those who were clothed in the platform - and they were crying out what (unlikely) imaginable one might imagine. If mass and pulse were terrified, as it was said, the parties, what should have made us shudder was the paraphernalia (almost) of all those who chose to inform the crowd.

Unsurprisingly aggressive speech, passionate personal peaks against those with different opinions about developments, indifference to the vulgar slogans with which organized classes welcomed the speakers' crowns, graphic approaches of the press there are 700,000 Greeks in Skopje who need to be given Greek passports, proposals "to make decisions on foreign policy matters from the" Church of the Municipality "instead of the House, the government or the Foreign Ministry.

The aim of most of them was not the briefing, but the fanaticism, the division, the conspiracy of the political system, and all the "worshipers" of those who did not agree with them. It is rumored that people like the chaos of the "anti-systemic" super-patriot aspire to rule us. Alas if all of them are the "new" that will emerge from the collapse of the "rotten treacherous political scene" which, according to those, "sells the nation out".

There is, in the end, perhaps more serious stakes: liberal bourgeois democracy. And that, let's have it in the back of our minds that we applaud them ...

http://www.kathimerini.gr/946568/opinion/epikairothta/politikh/neos-dixasmos-epi-8yrais

Macedonia and rightwing banality: history as myth machine

https://www.opendemocracy.net/can-europe-make-it/annagiulia-della-puppa/macedonia-and-rightwing-banality-history-as-myth-machine

"... Konstantinos Mitsotakis, one of the most important right wing Greek politicians of all time, once said about Slavophones in Greece: “I was so happy to get rid of them, I would never want them back”."

The article just posted by Carlin15 (Macedonia and rightwing banality: history as myth machine) may deserve a thread of its own.

Amazing work from the Amsterdam based doctoral student, exposing so many truths.

Impossible (still) for such work to be produced inside of Greece.

[Stojacanec]

I'll be honest. Even though everyone here despises the Greeks for being so nationalistic you have to admire them in a sense at being able to protect their interests whereas we are on the doorstep of losing our name and it seems like no one in the country will even protest.

I don't admire them very much at all. If they were so attached to the name Macedonia, they wouldn't have named it Northern Greece in the first place.

Secondly in order to accept 800 billion dollars in loans they are happy to be told to shape up and kiss the feet of a hand full from the Trioka.

There is nothing for Greece to lose in these protests. All the rules are against Macedonia.

Hypothetically what if the Troika needed Greece to sort out its dispute with Macedonia before they were to receive hundreds of billions in loans?
Then we can see what they are made of.

Otherwise these protest are nothing but shallow and pathetic.

[Amphipolis]

I don't admire them very much at all. If they were so attached to the name Macedonia, they wouldn't have named it Northern Greece in the first place.

We NEVER renamed Macedonia to North Greece.

[Stojacanec]

We NEVER renamed Macedonia to North Greece.

Its ok, I don't need a history lesson, I know that region was called Macedonia since antiquity.

Why were the administrative regions established in the 1987 bearing the name Macedonia? All decentralised.

Why in 1987?

Why was the name Macedonia so important for administrative purposes 30 years ago to the greeks?

[Amphipolis]

Its ok, I don't need a history lesson, I know that region was called Macedonia since antiquity.

Why were the administrative regions established in the 1987 bearing the name Macedonia? All decentralised.

Why in 1987?

Why was the name Macedonia so important for administrative purposes 30 years ago to the greeks?

I don't know if it is relevant to the name dispute. Dictatorship DID establish similar administrations in 1971, but were cancelled by the 2nd dictatorship of 1973.

Actually, both types of administrators (the previous one called nomarchs who were appointed and then elected and the new ones called peripheriarchs who are elected) are questionable. We still vote for them but we're not sure what their duties are, comparing to Mayors.

In short, having an administration (e.g. for Crete) or not having one but having four smaller ones called Chania, Heracleion, Rethymnon and Lasithi, doesn’t mean that Crete doesn’t exist or that you don’t call it Crete.

[Carlin]

https://twitter.com/JamesKerLindsay

- Sadly, however, there is no political cost to #Greece for intransigence over name issue. By rejecting a deal, Athens only faces further reputational damage. Meanwhile #Macedonia faces real damage to its further development. #EU needs to find a way to change this imbalance.

- Today there will be a major demonstration in #Greece against a name agreement with #Macedonia. It has been appalling to see how the issue has been used as a political football by Greek politicians.


One of the people rallying today in Athens protesting the use of the name Macedonia by R.Macedonia.