Daniel Fried: Macedonians exist

Tue, 04/08/2008 - 5:00pm

VANO SHLAMOV/AFP/Getty Images

It’s official: Macedonians are real, at least according to the U.S. State Department. 

At a NATO Summit Foreign Press Center briefing yesterday, Assistant Secretary of State Daniel Fried was asked by a journalist if his use of the phrase “ethnic Macedonian” during the briefing meant that the U.S. Government has recognized “the so-called ‘Macedonian ethnicity and language."' (briefing video here, skip to 37:15)

As if Macedonia didn't have enough identity issues already, "so-called” comes in reference to the Bulgarian assertian that Macedonian, the language, is nothing more than a Bulgarian dialect written in a Serbian script. 

But Fried would hear none of it:

I don't think it is so-called. Macedonian language exists. Macedonian people exist. We teach Macedonian at the Foreign Service Institute… There is also the historic Macedonian province, which is different from the country. And it's important. It's quite clear that the government in Skopje, what we Americans call the Government of Macedonia, has no claims. We recognize the difference between the historic territory of Macedonia, which is, of course, much larger than the current country.

By refusing to back down on his use of “Macedonia,” Assistant Secretary Fried has just gone where Dustin the Turkey refused to go. 

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FP Passport: Land of the Ostriches

by Dan Asta on Tue, 04/08/2008 - 4:09pm

We can pretend that Macedonia harbors no irredentism against Greece. But then as their gov't officials make all too clear, they actually DO:

http://www.turkishdailynews.com.tr/article.php?enewsid=101042

Read this:

"This map illustrates the 'knot' in the aftermath of the Balkan wars. It was the first time in history, after the Bucharest peace conference (1913), in which Greece stepped on Macedonian land and got the territory as far as below the city of Manastir (Bitola in Macedonian). By exchange of population, mainly with Greeks from Anatolia, the ethnic Macedonia was transformed into a part of the Greek state."

This gov't official is wrong. According to historian Mark Mazower, Greek Macedonia was equally divided in 1913 between Greeks, Slavophone natives (whatever you want to call them), Jews and Turks. There were 250,000 Greeks living in Salonika alone. The ethnically cleansed Greek settlers arrived later and made the region into a predominately Greek one. This was not "the first time" Greeks had set foot there.

The ambassador is just spewing some unfortunate historical biases.

Now, that my friends, is some deeply nationalist, fascist propaganda, brought to you by the likes of people that never got over their losses in the Balkan Wars, in their support of the Axis powers, and in Tito's attempt to change the name of Vardar Banovina to Macedonia, in line with Comintern principles, in order to wrest away Greek Macedonia.

The next time a Macedonian utters the words, "Greek Macedonia," will be the first time, as they prefer to use the term, "Aegean Macedonia," coined by Tito in his bloody war against Greece. Aegean Macedonia is unliberated territory, don't you know. I'm sure Greeks would be much more generous in sharing the term Macedonian were it not for the nationalists and propagandists north of the border.

As spoken above...once the

by kalashhnikov on Tue, 04/08/2008 - 5:04pm

As spoken above...once the aggression and respect to cultural heritage is respected up North, then the name will be the last thing on anyone's mind.
Until then, we can only perceive the persistence on the name as the vehicle that tomorrow will give out claims on history and land.
The argument that Skopje is just too small to be a threat is not valid. Better safe than sorry....

Obama Supports Greek Racism Against Its Own Ethnic Macedonians

by David Edenden on Tue, 04/08/2008 - 5:09pm

My blog
The Macedonian Tendency
http://the-macedonian-tendency.blogspot.com/

Greece's treatment of its ethnic Macedonian minoirty is the inspiration for every racist, every fascist, and every ethnic cleanser in the Balkans.

Obama supports the Greek position (by sponsoring legislation) denouncing the Government of the Repbulic of Macedonia for fighting the Greek attempt to have Macedonia wiped off the face of the map.

By the way, Bulgarians insist the Macedonians "speak Bulgarian" with a speach impediment. All Macedonians have to do is buy the program called "Hooked on Bulgarian Phonics" and all will be fine.

Again, give me some shred of

by kalashhnikov on Tue, 04/08/2008 - 6:25pm

Again, give me some shred of proof that such a minority exists in greece, and I'd be more than welcome to support you.
However, in the last elections, a party supporting your cause got less than 3000 votes.

Man, this is not a minority....this doesn't make up to fill a basketball stadium. Get real

Greetings from Skopje

by Lure D. Lou on Tue, 04/08/2008 - 5:24pm

I had a meeting with the Macedonian chief of Special Forces today to discuss rumors that his group of fascist super-men irredentists were planning to head south to Greece --- first to secure Salonika (or Voynagrad as they call it here) and then later on to Athens which they plan to rename Skopje Sud.....Once the northern beaches are secure, hordes of Macedonian holiday makers will head south, giving the middle-finger to the border posts which have been the site of so much humiliation. Then like Robert Mugabe turned the white farms over to the freedom fighters, Skopje plans on nationalizing the entire Greek pastry industry and put it into the control of the irredentists. Athens beware! They are EVERYWHERE!!!!

fait accompli

by la on Tue, 04/08/2008 - 7:54pm

The Macedonian state is a fiat accompli and has been such for the last 16 years. Macedonian national consciousness, on the other hand, is a bit older - as all of us know, it has been in the making ever since the WW II.
However, the "contents" of this consciousness, very much like the "Macedonian language", has not been a constant - it has changed and evolved over the years, and keeps changing in response to "contemporary challenges". One is to wonder, whether the vehemence of Macedonian nationalism will subdue only when the (founded, as well as unfounded) challenges towards the Macedonian identity stop. Or whether externally unchallenged Macedonian identity will fall into an even more serious crisis, lacking external enemy or threat.

As for the "challengers" it is also not clear whether they have chosen the best way. After all, if Greece were to accept from the very beginning Macedonia as a country called Macedonia, the Macedonians would not have been so passionate about this issue and would not have gone at such lengths to produce absurd "historical records" which only added oil to the fire. If the Bulgarians were to accept the existence of "Macedonian language", Macedonia would not have been so eager to choose the dialect most different from the literary Bulgarian language for its official language and would not have gone at such lengths as to add Latin letters to its Cyrillic alphabet.

On the other hand, if Macedonia were a strong state, practising good governance, it would have been able to base its existence namely on this - the civic/French model of nationalism. It is obvious that national consciousness and identity are of utmost importance for reliable state-building, but it is also common knowledge that such an identity does not necessarily rest on ethnic homogeneity or fabled glorious history. Of course, to claim the latter seems to be the easiest way.

As you have already noticed, the last three paragraphs are grammatically (and practically) counter factual, which means that some mistakes were made in the 90's and they are as much fiat accompli as the Macedonian state.

If there is some way to correct these mistakes, it is to leave history to the historians, language to the linguists and politics to the politicians. Politicising history or language does not help the peoples of those countries (only some of their political leaders, looking for easy dividends).

The Bulgarian position has been somewhat smarter - originally they refused to recognise the existence of Macedonian language, but recognised the state (the first country to do so) and established good diplomatic and economic relations. When the issue of language became a serious hurdle to the signing of treaties, a comfortable enough ambiguity was found, so that both sides were able to hold to a certain extent to their initial positions. Now language and history are still contentious, but there is a strong determination from the Bulgarian side to keep that at bay and away from politics.

The Greek position from the very beginning put history and ethnicity right in the middle of politics. When Greece was pressed to recognise the state and its entry in the UN, they kept it political on the EU and NATO entry tracks.

As to Mr. Fried's expression, my position is ambivalent. Of course it is obvious that the Macedonian state exists, the people living there are Macedonians, and the language they speak is called in the USA Foreign Service Institute Macedonian. But so what? The USA position in the world should not give it leeway to arbitrary decide what is to be recognised/sanctified as objective reality and what is to be swept under the carpet as unfounded nationalist hysteria. Doing so is dangerous. To press Greece to come around is important, but there are other ways.

Also, most of the Bulgarian and Greek complaints are historical, not related to the present. In other words they complain about the distortion of history, not about the reality (the fiat accompli of the Macedonian state or national consciousness). As the stereotypical modern state, on the other hand, Macedonia cannot accept national identity based on illegitimacy.

That is why statements such as Mr. Fried's do not really help the issue and strengthen the impression that American officials cannot "really" understand what it's all about down there.

The only way out of it is - leave history to the historians and language to linguists (The language issue is going to disappear by itself anyway. Macedonia is striving to change literary Macedonian. Just compare Macedonian newspapers from 1992 and 2008) and recognise the realities.

Really excellent post.

by Dan Asta on Tue, 04/08/2008 - 8:35pm

There are only a few things to ad. Besides the primary reasons for Greece's position--fears of a Macedonian minority causing trouble by capitalizing on the stated grievances of the Rep. of Macedonia--there are actual, if minor, technical problems. Greece will be forced to recognize its Turkish minority by the EU. If the EU also comes calling for it to recognize a Macedonian minority, this will present a huge dilemma, since for Greeks that term refers to inhabitants of Greek Macedonia who are in the majority. Obviously, Greece will never, and logically can never, recognize a Macedonian minority as such. As well, the EU has special protections for products designated by region of origin. With both Macedonia and Greek Macedonia in the EU, there will be natural confusion in the name. Nimetz states that neither Greece nor Macedonia will have monopoly over the name, but Nimetz works for the US and the UN. Such "sharing" is difficult to apply in the EU where countries are bound by "names" and technicalities.