Macedonia

Where to go in Macedonia

Places I saw and recommend in Macedonia: Skopje and Lake Ohrid.

Defining Macedonia

If you’re like most people on this planet, you know almost nothing about Macedonia. Incredibly, for over 20 years, Greece and Macedonia have been passionately and fanatically fighting each other over Macedonia’s name. It sounds absurd (and it is), but it’s true. Welcome to the Balkans.

Monastery in the Plačkovica Mountains. Photo by Peter Fenďa on Flickr.

When Yugoslavia broke up, it gave birth to seven new countries that were all boring when it came to naming themselves. They simply made their republic’s name into their country name. For example, when Yugoslavia’s Republic of Montenegro became an independent country, it called itself the Republic of Montenegro. Yugoslavia’s Republic of Macedonia copied the republics and declared that their newly independent country would be called the Republic of Macedonia. That seemed reasonable, but when that happened, Greece became stormier than Poseidon in a hurricane.

Just like the US has 50 states, Greece is divided into several internal states, and its northernmost one is called Macedonia. Greece argued that when Yugoslavia’s Macedonia called itself Macedonia, it was threatening Greece’s Macedonia. They have never explained how Yugoslavia’s poorest republic could threaten Greece, which is part of NATO. Macedonia is not part of NATO, so if they attacked Greece, they would be inviting all of NATO, including the US military, to come knocking on their door.

Nevertheless, enraged Greeks imposed an embargo against Macedonia, blocked Macedonia’s entry into the UN, and said it would not stop until Macedonia changed its name. After a 20-month embargo, Macedonia agreed to call itself the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, or FYROM.Greece agreed to not block Macedonia from joining any international organization as long as it used the name FYROM. So now FYROM is in the UN.

However, in 2008, Greece blocked Macedonia’s application into NATO, even though Macedonia applied using the FYROM name. In 2011, Macedonia appealed the UN’s highest court saying that Greece illegally vetoed Macedonia’s NATO application, because it had no good reason to do so, other than to take a cheap shot at Macedonia. The quarrel gets more stupid.

Statue of Alexander the Great in Skopje, Macedonia. Photo by Panoramas on Flickr.

When Macedonia renamed its main highway and airport after Alexander the Great and put a statue of him in Skopje, Greece had a dramatic heart-attack and gasped, “You’re stealing our heritage!” The final death blow to the Macedonia-Greek relationship was when a few Macedonian “intellectuals” started trumpeting the theory that today’s Slavic Macedonians are descendants of the ancient Macedonians. At that point, if Greece had nuclear weapons, it would have used them.

It’s not just Greece’s politicians and academics who are furious—the average Greek on the street is surprisingly passionate about this farcical issue. For example, after Macedonia’s independence from Yugoslavia, about one million Greeks rallied in Thessaloniki to protest against Macedonia’s name. Even 100,000 Greeks in Melbourne, Australia took to the streets over the name dispute. American Greeks took out two full-page ads in The New York Times to make the point.

Today, any YouTube video, Facebook page, or news article about Macedonia’s name will get an Everest-sized mountain of passionate (and often insulting) comments.

A 2010 Gallup survey of Greeks showed that 82% thought that the problem was “completely” or “mostly” Macedonia’s fault, 72% looked at Macedonia unfavorably, and 85% thought that if Macedonia doesn’t change its name, then Greece should block Macedonia’s entry into the EU. In addition, about 66% of Greeks thought this whole debate is “very important” and 29% thought there could be war in the region soon.

This is an excerpt of The Hidden Europe: What Eastern Europeans Can Teach Us. Almost half of the chapter about Macedonia is devoted to this colorful naming debate. It's a controversial chapter that nationalists on both sides of the debate should read. They probably won't like it. Not much has changed since I visited in 2004 and wrote about the Macedonia name debate. It's an article that has received many likes. I also wrote about the best way to get to Macedonia by road.