What right has Macedonia to be part of Europe?

Question

It's a pocket of mixed races and religions in the mountains north of Greece, which has a province called Macedonia which is bigger than the mountain entity. Like Switzerland, it's the fact of the people in the mountain entity being mountain people which gives them their common identity, but they have no real claim to the name, as Greece points out.

They should call themselves something else.

Answer 1

as a individual u have i have the right to call my self what ever i want i also can change my name if i wish no one can force me or u we can also have same names so what BUT IF U WANT THE TRUTH JUST CLICK AT THE LINKS BELOW is made from people who dedicated all their lifes to this SO DONT TRUST WHAT PEOPLE SAY AFTER U SEE THE CLIPS

http://www.megavideo.com/?v=9P6EBCUV

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=...

U CAN ALSO WRITE IN GOOGLE (MACEDONIA) IN THE BIBLE)

Answer 2

It has a right to be part of Europe as it IS in Europe. In fact it is completely landlocked by European countries.

Greece has a right to call its province Macedonia because the territory it occupies used to be called, at one point in history, that (Alexander the Great). The territory the Republic of Macedonia occupies was also, at one point in history called Macedonia (by the Ottomans). And this is pretty much the entire territory, not just a part of it. So, while the same name applies to different things, it has historic validity and Greece has chosen to call itself Hellada - Rep. Macedonia feels it has no other name that will identify it as correctly as the current one.

Most importantly, the people that live there think of themselves as Macedonians. I have considered the arguments that Tito created Rep. Macedonia or that Macedonians are actually Bulgarians very carefully so I went and asked people that were alive and remember the situation BEFORE World War II. I have been told they remember calling themselves Macedonian even then, before Tito was anywhere near power, before Rep. Macedonia had achieved an autonomous state. They even remember being forced to study Bulgarian in school and forbidden to speak Macedonian!

History books are written by the winners of wars, but these people clearly remember having a Macedonian identity at the beginning of last century.

Answer 3

The problem is that more powerful forces want Macedonia [the Republic of] to join NATO.  Both the US and UK govs believe that once Macedonia is in NATO it will stabilise things in the Balkans.

I can very well understand and do appreciate the Greek objection to the use of the name 'Macedonia' - it being the name of that part of northern Greece where Alexander was born.

The Greeks have a word for it - ethnic - and the people of so-called Macedonia are not ethnic Greeks.

What we have here is the basis for a 'race war'.  I believe that the powers that be should pay more attention to the Greek argument.

Here is the most famous non-Greek Greek of all time, dancing to Zorba by M. Theodorakis -

YouTube - Zorba The Greek, the Greek Dance, and Greek Pride

Zorba the Greek enjoys life and shows how proud he is to be Greek! Memoirs from

Kazantzakis' writings show how Greek he was despite others who say he wasn't ...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ndPJRh_K2...

Answer 4

Macedonia is physically located on the continent of Europe.

The current issue which I think you are referring to regards NATO expansion, in which Greece used its veto to block Macedonia's membership bid.

NATO is a military alliance which offers security to its members

Answer 5

Because you can't dig it up and move it to say, South America.

Answer 6

If the nation of Macedonian people felt like they wanted a territory for themselves then Bulgaria and Greece had no right to interfere because there are no laws saying that a former Yugoslavic nation can't be autonomous. So if they called themselves Macedonia, then there is obviously a reason why they did so and it's within justified limits.

They have a claim to the name if that is who they are... Greece and Bulgaria must swallow it and grow up.

Answer 7

Macedonia is in Europe, hence it is part of Europe. Macedonia is inhabited by Macedonian people, hence they can call their homeland Macedonia. If Greece has a province which is inhabited by Macedonians, they can call the province Macedonia. As far as I know, there are a number of cities with the same name, such as Santiago, Tripoli, Sydney. What is the problem with having a Greek province and a country with the same name?

Answer 8

Macedonia has every right to be in Europe, as it belongs to Europe geographically, culturally and historically. The fact that in it people of mixed ethnicity live is of no importance. Switzerland for instance is similarly "mixed" - combines population of originally Italian and German origin.

In presen day Macedonia the major ethnic groups are of originally Albanian and Bulgarian origin. Note - presently they are not Albanian or Bulgarian - its just their historical and cultural origin.

The problem comes from the fact that in the beginning of the last century (the Balkan wars) and later right after WWII under Stalin's ideology on nations, "macedonism" was born, which basically rejects any connection between the present Slavic population in Macedonia and Bulgarians. Greece on the other hand proclaimed the Bulgarians living on its territory as "Slavophonic Greeks" - an obviously theoretical construct as there is no such thing as unspecified Slavic ethnicity. Bulgaria and Greece in fact (appr. 1914) signed an agreement for exchange of populations, which settled the issue between the two countries. Under this agreement many Bulgarians from Aegean Macedonia (not quite "voluntarily" and with the "active help" of the Greeks in fact!) resettled in the then free from Ottoman domination state of Bulgaria.

Every third - fourth Bulgarian has some relation to those refugees. Those remaining under then Serbian rule stayed where they were and were proclaimed "Southern Serbs".

The problem with the name comes from the fact that the Macedonian nation was created for the first time under Communist Jugoslavia in 1945, one of the first acts being the standardization of the dialect into a literary language and little by little Serbicizing it.

Present Macedonian official sources claim the history of ancient Macedonia as their own (as well as parts of Bulgarian Medieval and 19th c. history) declaring the existence of a historical Macedonian ethinicity.

This is what Greece (and Bulgaria) can not accept.

The only salvation, therefore, and future for this country is the truth - without territorial or history claims! Truth is the salvation for both Greece and Macedonia! There is no danger in it for anybody - just for a handful of old-time pro-Serbian macedonists and a handful of Greek shovinists.

To kittycat: Yes, there are also old peolpe in Bulgaria who call themselbes Shopi, Thracians, Balkandjii, Rhodopeans, etc. - such as there are Germans who are Bavarians, etc.  

Still, I am ready to accept your argument, if you can give me:1/ a title of a book (+author's name) written before WWII, which is in the present Macedonian language, 2/ the name of one school or the name of one bukvar (literacy textbook) in Macedonia before WWII where the language of instruction was Macedonian.

Macedonian before its codification in 1945 was a Western dialect of Bulgarian.

Here is the document with which the Communist government in 1945 stipulates the present Macedonian alphabet - it actually uses the Bulgarian letter "Й", which is replaced with the Serbian "J":

http://bg.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%9A%D0%B...

Also, can you tell me why people in Macedonia whisper and look around, when they tell me they are of Bulgarian origin?

Answer 9

Macedonia is west of the Bosphorus and thus it is European. I would not pay much attention to the modern Greek state. They are always banging on about some imagined grievance.